


no grave can hold my body down

by peachyykat



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Homophobia, Homophobic Slurs (it's Derry), M/M, Maturin the Turtle - Freeform, Patty/Richie Friendship :D, Post-Canon Fix-It, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), major character death is temporary, mike's weird rituals inc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyykat/pseuds/peachyykat
Summary: When Richie re-carves the two letters into the Kissing Bridge, it feels like a time machine. He can see himself so clearly - 13, glasses too big for his face, head on a swivel, his dad’s pocket knife clutched in hand. He sees himself, and he feels it too, the heart-pounding nervousness and.And.There had been hope.***Or, another post-canon fix-it because they deserved better.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 106
Kudos: 302





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i'm writing another fix-it. this chapter is very sad, i'm sorry, but i promise!!! major character death is TEMPORARY i would never write anything where eddie/stan stay dead

When Richie re-carves the two letters into the Kissing Bridge, it feels like a time machine. He can see himself so clearly - 13, glasses too big for his face, head on a swivel, his dad’s pocket knife clutched in hand. He sees himself, and he feels it too, the heart-pounding nervousness and.

And.

There had been hope. There had been so much hope alongside the anxiety. Pressed into those letters, stuck fast in the bridge, forever woven into Derry. He’d sent a ripple through the town, you may not accept me but I am still here and this is never going anywhere. He had known, even then, that Eddie was always going to be it for him, was always going to be the one he thought of with sweaty palms and warm thoughts. He’d hoped, secretly and with no small amount of shame, that one day he’d just be able to hold Eddie’s hand. That had been all he wanted and all he could ask himself for in his mind. To hold Eddie’s hand, and be able to walk through the town that had hated them, and shove it in their faces. They could be happy and fuck everyone else in Derry as long as they had each other.

He’d thought about marrying Eddie, once. Had imagined it - a party with all of the Losers. The ceremony wouldn’t be anything boring like any of the weddings they had been to. The cake would be full of all the stuff Eddie’s mom wouldn’t want him to have, dairy, gluten, sugar. They would dance with their friends and go home at the end of the night, exhausted and _together._ He had made it through the fantasy without realizing exactly what he was thinking about. Once he did, he had blushed furiously and resolved to put it out of his mind. It wasn’t his fault if thoughts of baby’s breath and murmured words of an officiant floated through his mind when he looked at Eddie for too long.

He’d wanted all of this. He’d wanted to be strong for Eddie. Big and tough like one of his comic-book heroes. Able to take out anyone who hissed ‘fag’ behind sharp, piercing eyes and snake’s teeth. He knew Eddie wasn’t delicate, but Richie wanted more than anything to be the one who could tell Mrs. K to just fuck right off when she told him he was too sick to run track or go play with the rest of the kids. 

But it hadn’t worked out like that in the end, had it?

In the end, Richie had been frozen by fear. Had watched as Eddie was impaled through the abdomen, had watched as he was flung across the cavern with enough force to seriously hurt someone who wasn’t already bleeding out. Had tried, so hard, to staunch the flow of blood with his leather jacket. Eddie was the strong one, then. He had joked the entire time he was _dying_ \- wanted to make _Richie_ feel better. Richie hadn’t been strong enough to help him. He hadn’t even been strong enough to just _get him out._ Eddie shouldn’t have had to die down there, in those dank, dark caverns he hated buried with the thing that ruined his life. Richie had fought, tried to stay with him, tried to get him out, but he wasn’t strong enough. They dragged Richie out as he fought tooth and nail, screaming Eddie’s name like it could wake him up somehow.

That’s why he was here now. Richie hadn’t been strong enough to protect Eddie from It, so the least he could do was make sure Eddie wasn’t forgotten. As he drags the knife back over the faded ‘R+E’ carved into the bridge, weathered by time and lost memories, he smiles softly, sadly. He wants to make sure Eddie won’t be forgotten, that there will be a mark of him somewhere that outlasts all of them. Richie plans to carve it in every surface he can find, leaving little pieces of Eddie all over the world. He didn’t deserve to be stuck in Derry.

Richie stands up, wincing slightly at the pain in his knees, then feeling guilty for it as he remembers Eddie’s mangled body in the caverns. Pain seems like a luxury now. He walks through the town, through the places the Losers would frequent back when they first learned of the permanence of death. He wanders by Bill’s childhood home, by the sewer drain that had swallowed Georgie under the earth. Past the synagogue where Stan had announced he always would be a Loser - Richie had been so proud of him then, that he had stood up for himself and had chosen them. He wishes, suddenly, that Stan had chosen them this time.

He stops in front of the door to the hotel. He dreads going inside to the rest of the Losers. They’re evidently the only ones staying there and the staff miraculously disappeared after assigning their rooms, so he knows they’ll be the only ones in the lobby. He does not want to go in. He does not want to see the pity in their faces, _especially_ does not want to see Ben and Bev all over each other. The Quarry had been weird enough with all of them. Richie really hopes that their reactions had been due to shock and that they just couldn’t think about what happened to Eddie and Stan. He’s really, really, hoping, because if it wasn’t shock, that means he’s the only one who was _that_ strongly affected by Eddie’s death, and then they’ll know.

He loves them. He does, despite the 27-year hole in their friendship. He just can’t cope with seeing them after everything that’s happened. Can’t look at the two empty spaces they leave subconsciously. Can’t look at Ben and Bev and the fact that something good _did_ come out of this, because it really feels like it shouldn’t have. He’s jealous in a way that makes him feel terrible, because he knows they deserve to have each other, but he can’t quite choke down the bitterness in the back of his throat that says _I wanted that too_.

He and Ben had been more similar than he’d given thought to. Both pining after another member of the Loser’s Club, loving from afar. He’d like to think he’d been a little less obvious. They’d both been stuck on the same person for their entire lives. He didn’t know what it had been like for Ben, but Richie realizes now that _every single guy_ he’s ever shame hooked-up with has been a little bit Eddie. Maybe shorter than him. Maybe dark-haired. Maybe thick eyebrows. Maybe mouthy, maybe came with a long list of allergies, maybe pretended not to think Richie was funny but laughed at his jokes anyways. He’d been looking for Eddie his whole life without even knowing who he was.

He thinks Ben might know. In the Quarry, after Richie had broken down in front of all of them (he hadn’t been able to handle seeing the blood on his glasses and thinking _this is the last I have of him_ ), Ben had looked at him like he knew exactly what kind of pain Richie was feeling. 

He pushes open the door to the hotel. He looks like shit, he knows. His hair is matted, his glasses are cracked, he smells like B.O. and sewer water. Four heads turn his way, and he feels his chest tighten as he thinks _it should be six._ They all look tired, but no one is celebrating like Richie thought they would be. He thinks maybe it’s had time to sink in, what the cost of their victory had been. 

“Hey, man,” says Mike quietly. Fuck, everyone looks so _sad_.

“Hey,” says Richie, and then it’s silent. He sinks down into a chair on the edge of the group, not willing to throw himself in the middle of everything. He eyes the rest of the Losers warily, but it seems like no one is really paying attention to him. They all just seem numb.

As Richie looks at the group, he remembers how he could still tell exactly who everyone was even after almost three decades. Bev still had the same fiery hair, Ben had the same kind eyes, Bill had the same piercing blue eyes and authoritative presence, and Mike’s laugh remained exactly the same.

And Eddie.

Richie had felt like he’d been punched in the gut when Eddie had walked into the Jade. He was so much the same as when he was 13 - still shorter than Richie, still always-worried and furrowed brow, still long list of allergies, still hyper-reactive.

Still perfect.

Richie had _wanted_ . More than he had in years. He’d remembered Eddie like he’d been hit by a lightning bolt. He hadn’t ever forgotten, really. He’d been haunted by dreams of sun shining through a patchy ceiling on a boy in red shorts in a hammock. Dreams of shrieking laughter amidst cries of _you’re not fucking funny, Richie_ and _oh my God, that’s the shittiest Voice I’ve ever heard!_ It had just been having a face and name to the person he’d been after his whole life. It had been enough to almost send Richie into cardiac arrest after Eddie had yelled some dumb joke about taking off their shirts and kissing.

Richie’s going to break the fuck down again just thinking about it, so he does what he does best and starts talking.

“So,” he says, shifting uncomfortably as everyone turns his way again, “what the fuck are we. You know. Going to do now. Like. When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” Ben and Bev answer at the same time. Ben looks sheepish as Beverly explains.

“I have to take care of some stuff in Chicago,” she says, running her thumb over her ring finger. “Ben’s coming with me.”

“Shacking up already?” asks Richie. It’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out sounding more sad than he means it to. 

“Um, no,” says Ben, “I just thought… she might need the support. Because.”

Richie immediately feels like an asshole. He’s forgotten about the husband. He’d Googled Bev, curious since he’d heard the name of her label. He’d found a whole slew of online conspiracy theories about Rogan abusing her. 

“Well. Fuck,” says Richie, “what about you guys? Bill?”

“I’m staying here for a little bit,” he says, looking at Mike and _oh fuck not you guys too._

“He’s going to help me with packing up some stuff from the library,” says Mike. “There’s a lot of history there that I don’t want to lose, but I’m definitely not staying here.”

“What about you, Rich?” asks Bev, her eyes going soft.

Richie honestly hasn’t given much thought to what he’s going to do. He left his phone at the hotel and knows it will be full of angry messages from his manager and venues. He just thinks about leaving Derry and it _hurts_ , despite everything, because leaving Derry would mean leaving Eddie here, and he can’t bring himself to do it.

“Y’know,” says Richie, eyes on his feet. “I’ll probably stick around for a little bit. See the sights. Help Mike pack up his shit.”

He does not appreciate the way that they all look at each other. He _really_ does not appreciate the way Ben looks at _him._

“What?” he snaps, even though he knows damn well _what._

“I thought you wanted to leave,” says Ben carefully, even though Richie knows what he means is _you almost left us here, man, I tried to talk you down and you took off out the fucking fire escape._

“Yeah, well, clown’s dead,” says Richie. “Shouldn’t be that bad anymore now that I don’t have a fucking alien chasing after me singing songs about how I’m gay.”

Everyone looks a bit startled at that. Fuck, he hadn’t actually told them yet. 

Richie fights the urge to scream and instead stands up abruptly, murmurs “I’m gonna go take a shower,” and takes off.

As soon as the door closes behind him he realizes this is not his room.

There’s blood all over the fucking place. There’s a shower curtain strung out in the floor with broken pieces of glass and Richie’s stomach lurches as he sees the fucking _fanny pack_ laid out on the bedside table. He’s shaking and he thinks he might be crying, but he’s not sure because his whole body’s gone cold.

Richie just starts picking up the room. Rinses the shower curtain out over the sink, hangs it back up. Picks up pieces of glass and debris and throws them away. He doesn’t know why.

He finishes, looks at the bloodstains in the carpet, and sinks to the floor sobbing. It’s just too fucking much, seeing Eddie in this room. He has matching luggage, there are medications carefully lined up on the bedside table next to the fanny pack. There’s so much of _him_ here. 

Richie gets up, wipes his eyes. He looks in the fanny pack. He picks up the spare inhaler and pockets it.

He eventually does return to his room. He takes a shower. As soon as he steps out, he’s hit with a wave of exhaustion. It’s been hell on earth for almost 48 hours straight and he doesn’t think any of them have slept. He crashes onto the bed and is asleep within minutes.

He wakes up around 3 A.M., groggy and disoriented. It’s like when you’d wake up on vacation when you were little, he thinks, and you don’t remember where you are or what you’re doing at first.

Then he remembers.

He remembers, and panics. He feels like he can’t breathe as his mind _helpfully_ replays every god awful thing he’s seen in the past two days mixed with memories from 27 years ago. He’s crying again.

He swipes blindly for his glasses and stumbles down to the bar in his makeshift pajamas, which consist of a very holey pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt proudly proclaiming _I am a single Dad who is addicted to Cool Math Games._

He is surprised to see Bill’s already beaten him to the punch. 

“Why are you awake?” Bill asks, pouring a glass of whiskey for Richie.

“C’ld ask you th’ same thing,” grumbles Richie. He knows it’s pretty evident he’s been crying but Bill tactfully ignores it.

“Couldn’t sleep,” says Bill. “Nightmares.”

“Same hat,” says Richie, and knocks back the glass of whiskey.

Bill looks a little concerned but pours Richie another glass anyways. God, Richie loves him.

“So,” says Bill, and Richie can already tell from the tone that this is not a conversation he wants to have. “Gay, huh?”

Richie takes it back. He hates Bill. “You’re an author, right? Like words. And books.”

“Richie-”

“So in theory you are a master of the English language-”

“I’m trying to be fucking sincere here!-”

“And ‘gay, huh?’ was the best fucking way you thought to start this conversation.”

Bill looks a little pissed off. Richie’s glad. It’s 3 A.M. and he’s making Richie talk about _this_ right _now._

“I’m just saying,” says Bill, and _why is everyone so sappy around him now,_ “we’re proud of you.”

Richie snorts. “For what, fucking dudes? Thanks, I really am braver than any U.S. Marine.”

“No, dickhead, for telling us,” says Bill.

“Yeah, well,” says Richie, and then they’re silent until Bill pads back upstairs.

Ben and Bev leave early the next morning, promising to text later. Richie does help Mike and Bill pack and tries to ignore the longing glances between them. That’s some shit he’s definitely not emotionally prepared to deal with right now.

Richie’s the last one out of Derry. He knew he would be. He’s racking up a small fortune in hotel charges, but he can’t bring himself to care. He keeps walking by the Neibolt house as if one day it’ll be standing again and Eddie will come out the front door.

He does leave Derry, eventually. He’s been there long enough that it’s getting difficult to pretend he’s back in L.A. He tries not to think throughout his flight about how much Eddie would hate airports.

His apartment seems so much more empty than it did before. He doesn’t think of Eddie. He doesn’t think of everyone else riding off into the sunset, grieving but still happy. He doesn’t think about how this is how the rest of his life is going to go now, lonely and knowing why.

He doesn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Instead of responding to the calls, to the texts, to the worry he can feel even from miles away, Richie curls up like a spider. Whenever they get too close, whenever they see too much of him, he draws all the long, gangly, messy parts of himself to his chest. All of them had seen too much, gotten too close, whenever Richie had been dragged out of the house. He’d clawed at the ground like he could dig his way back down.

In the first few months that Richie is home in L.A. he throws himself into his work. He’s writing his own material now, much to the shock of his manager, but he feels like he owes it to Eddie (and ignores the way he had felt when Eddie had yelled “I knew it” triumphantly in the Jade, ignores the thoughts about Eddie watching him). 

It’s always been easier to let someone else do the heavy lifting. It’s not as hard if the audience doesn’t laugh at him, because they don’t think the  _ writer  _ is funny, not Richie. He can usually hide behind the comfortable stage persona with the knowledge that if someone doesn’t like his act, it’s not like they don’t like him. They just don’t like the typical bro-humor and foul jokes that have come to be associated with Trashmouth Tozier.

He writes pages. Deletes them all. Nothing sounds funny anymore and everything ends up being more depressing than he means it to be (“Hey, think of your worst high school reunion ever. Now think about if two of your classmates died and you also had to kill an alien clown that’s been after you since you were 13.”). He either doesn’t sleep or sleeps for 16 hours. He rarely eats, only remembering that he needs to when he stands up and his vision goes black. He doesn’t leave his apartment. It makes him feel guilty that he has the possibility to leave, to see the world, and Eddie doesn’t.

He still can’t bring himself to leave.

The Losers have given up trying to talk to him one-on-one at this point. They tried, for the first couple of weeks. Tried to call him, text him. He wouldn’t pick up. He wasn’t strong enough to even hear other members of the Losers Club. It just made him think about Eddie and Stan and how they should have gotten this. They should have been able to be in the group chat. Stan should have been able to send pictures of birds he’d seen on his way to work. Eddie should have been able to call to rant about a client or someone who’d pissed him off in traffic.

Instead of responding to the calls, to the texts, to the worry he can feel even from miles away, Richie curls up like a spider. Whenever they get too close, whenever they see too much of him, he draws all the long, gangly, messy parts of himself to his chest. All of them had seen too much, gotten too close, whenever Richie had been dragged out of the house. He’d clawed at the ground like he could dig his way back down. He thinks maybe they believe if they stop prodding, he’ll uncurl. The last few text messages they’d sent individually had all been things along the lines of ‘we care about you’ and ‘we’re here if you need us’.

The only one still calling is Steve, who Richie can tell is pissed off after the last disastrous show. He had kindly not mentioned it so far, since he can tell Richie is off. That something happened Richie doesn’t want to talk about. He won’t stop, though. He’s worried about Richie, too, but he won’t say it. He just calls nonstop to talk about ‘comedy’ but Richie’s pretty sure it’s to make sure he’s not dead.

He eventually does have to write  _ something  _ just to stop Steve’s constant check-ups. Steve is an asshole, which makes him an excellent manager. Richie is determined not to notice any similarities between Steve and Eddie. 

The phone call that finally makes him turn something in is on a Saturday. Richie has his computer open and is checking Twitter on his phone (the Internet is having a field day with his sudden disappearance after his last show. The current most popular theory is that he’s run away with a woman he co-hosted a show with once. He has not spoken to her since). The phone rings, Richie knows immediately who it is, and does not answer it. The phone rings again. Richie gets up to make more coffee. The phone rings again. Richie sends a copy-pasted message about driving with Do Not Disturb on. He receives a one-worded text for his efforts (‘Bullshit’) and the phone rings again. He picks up.

“Yeah,” he says, and takes a long sip of coffee.

“Did you really think that would work? You haven’t left your fucking apartment in months,” seethes Steve. Oh, he actually sounds really pissed.

“Worth a shot,” says Richie, staring at the blank page in front of him. 

He’s vaguely aware of Steve ranting in the background as he begins to type again.

“Are you even fucking  _ listening  _ to me?” Steve says. He sounds tired.

“Nnnnnnope,” says Richie, because now he’s thoroughly distracted by the fact that he’s actually just written something that doesn’t sound sad. The wonders of over-caffeination.

“Richie, I’m actually worried about you,” says Steve. “No one besides me has seen or heard from you since you got back from that impromptu holiday - didn’t ever tell me you grew up in Maine, by the way - and you have not turned in  _ anything.  _ The Netflix special already fell through. I’m working on setting up a date in the future and seeing if we can fix that. But you have to give me  _ something  _ to work with here, buddy.”

Buddy is new. He’s really trying to be nice now. What the hell.

“Mmm-hmm,” says Richie, still typing.

“Richie-”

“I’m gay,” he says. It’s gotten easier to say now that he doesn’t really care about what happens to him anymore. Silver lining.

“Oh,” says Steve. “Good for you?”

“Uh-huh,” says Richie, and hangs up, because this conversation is not going anywhere. He ignores the rest of Steve’s calls until he sends an email with the material he’s written so far over. His phone goes quiet for a while and rings again.

“Any good?” asks Richie.

“Yeah,” says Steve, and he sounds less tired than before. “This is actually… like really good. You’re funny.”

Once upon a time Richie would have pressed him for more, teased him about liking the material. Now he just grunts noncommittally. It’s harder to accept praise.

“Shit,” says Steve, and now he actually sounds excited. “If I send this in, I bet we could get you a show or two set up. Maybe get that Netflix show scheduled a little sooner than I thought. We could really play the gay angle.”

Richie hangs up again. Gets back on Twitter. Posts once and shuts his phone off because he feels like it’s time he gave all the social media people  _ something,  _ even if it’s two words. He wanders around for a bit. Throws some things in the laundry. Puts on a mildly interesting documentary and pretends like he’s watching it while he zones out completely.

When he comes to, he turns his phone back on before he’s remembered. He’s treated to thousands of Twitter notifications and several missed calls from the Losers and Steve. He’s forgotten that right before the two-hour doc he’d just posted “i’m gay” on Twitter dot com and everyone is losing their shit.

There are a lot of people who think he’s joking (“fuck, just like Tozier to make jokes about this shit. disappointed but not surprised”) and a lot of people who think it makes sense (“Didn’t he just disappear for like months? Maybe he was having a midlife crisis. Good for him”) and a couple tweets from his friends (Bev has retweeted with a heart emoji, Bill has retweeted with “One of the bravest people I know. Proud of you man” which is a filthy fucking lie Richie isn’t brave or strong Bill should fucking know that). 

Richie is overwhelmed. He wants to shut his phone off again and just hole up and write. Instead, he texts Bev and asks for Patty Uris’s number. She gives it to him. He ignores the subsequent texts asking if he’s okay.

It takes him a while to actually call and talk to her. She answers the phone warily but is nothing but warm after Richie explains who he is. She says she’s been talking to some of the rest of the Losers. They’ve explained almost everything to her and she’s taken it in stride.

Richie is astonished. “You just. Believe us.”

“Well, honey,” says Patty, “there was a lot of stuff Stan couldn’t explain about when he was a kid. Like he had some kind of mental block. I thought something horribly traumatic had happened. I guess it did, it’s just not exactly what I expected. Honestly, I thought he just didn’t want to talk about his parents. They were a little much.”

“You believe us.”

Patty laughs. “Yes, Richie. I believe you.”

He’s at a loss for words. Stan had clearly done the best out of all of them. No wonder he couldn’t come back. “Yeah, they were. A little much. His parents.”

“Oh, I know,” says Patty, and starts telling him about their wedding. The parents had pushed for the ‘perfect’ wedding, all traditional, all staunch and dignity. Instead, something in Stan had snapped. Stan had taken Patty and they’d driven as far north as they possibly could. They’d gotten married at a courthouse and traveled to a nearby forest where Stan pointed out the different birds. They’d said their vows barefoot in a pool by a waterfall. She said they could barely even hear each other. 

Richie’s crying by the end of her story. He thinks she might be too.

“You should come and see me,” she says. “In Atlanta.”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s surprised at his own answer. “Um. When?”

“Anytime,” she says, and he really believes her.

It takes another month, but he does go to Atlanta. When she greets him at the door, he’s immediately wrapped up in a hug. It’s nice. He doesn’t think he’s even been around another person since he was in Derry. Doesn’t remember the last time he was hugged.

She leads him in and Richie is blown away by how much  _ Stan  _ is in the house. There’s pictures of the two of them nestled between well-loved books on the shelves. He looks, feels guilty for it. He really does look the same, just taller. Richie can still see the faint scars around his face if he looks hard enough.

Patty pours him a glass of tea. Richie is surprised to find it is sweet before he remembers where he is. It’s a bit awkward until Patty clears her throat.

“Will you tell me what he was like?” she asks, her smile soft like a homemade sweater. “As a kid. And I’ll give you embarrassing stories from when he was in college.”

“Oh, of course,” says Richie. “This is what I was born for.”

He tells her about Stan. About how he’d said ‘fuck’ in front of the rabbi and Richie had been pretty sure the dude was going to keel over from a heart attack right there. About how Stan had the  _ weirdest  _ fucking sense of humor ever and was perfect for Richie because he took everything Richie said with a grain of salt and responded to it deadpan and perfect. About how Stan had tried to read the whole dictionary for fun one time and had failed spectacularly because Richie kept asking him if different swear words were in it (“Hey what about ‘asshole’? Is asshole in the dictionary?” “Richie  _ please-” _ ).

Patty tells him about Stan in college. How she’d fallen in love with the boy in her statistics class who would lean over and whisper jokes about the professor. The boy who would take her out for coffee and didn’t expect anything more than company. The boy she’d married. 

It takes less than 2 hours before they’re on the couch in the living room (tasteful, very well-decorated. Richie had expected nothing less) and they’re both crying. Richie is not as graceful of a crier as Patty. She’d asked him about Eddie. Richie supposes someone else had told her about him. He tells her about Eddie too. Eddie, Stan, Bill, and Richie had known each other the longest. He tells her about Eddie annoying the shit out of Stan with the paddle ball in the clubhouse. He tells her about Eddie carefully applying ointment to Stan’s scars so they would heal ‘right’. 

Patty hands him a tissue and he blows his nose wetly. 

“Fuck, that’s so gross,” Richie sniffles. “I’m sorry. That’s really gross. Fuck.”

“I get it honey,” says Patty, and offers him a sad smile. A tear runs down her face. She dabs at it gently. “I feel it too.”

Richie hasn’t even said anything about why talking about Eddie is fucking him up so much. He guesses she just knows. It seems like everyone just knows, and it’s usually enough to set Richie on edge when he recognizes it. It makes his jokes meaner, his edges sharper. With Patty, it feels different. It’s like she sees herself in him. He knows he sees his own grief reflected in her eyes. It’s more comforting than terrifying.

“Do you,” says Richie. Stops. He can’t look at her. “Do you think. That I’m a good person. That he could have… you know.”

She does know. 

“I think so,” she says. “Stan liked you. That was usually enough for me. I like you too, Richie. I think you’re good.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know how to thank her for taking him in, for pouring him tea, for grieving with him. 

Richie stays for a couple days. She takes him to the botanical gardens, pointing out the duck swimming in the greenhouse pond that Stan would bring peas for (“Not bread, that’s so bad for them!”) and to an art museum (He won’t stop making terrible jokes about the art exhibits, but Patty still laughs while she smacks him and tells him to quit). Sometimes, though, they’ll just sit in the living room together and read. He thinks Patty’s missed the company. He knows he has.

When he leaves, he realizes that for the first time in months he’s come out of an interaction with another person that leaves him feeling something other than numb. Patty hugs him tight and makes him promise to come back soon.

“Disposable income, baby,” he says, grins. “I also don’t know that I’ll be able to go months without your cooking again.”

When he gets back into his apartment, it feels less like a death trap this time.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe. He has a good start on being okay again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we still have a few more rough chapters to go but i promise he gets to be happy!!
> 
> my twitter is @peachyylosxr if you want to yell at me or hear me yell


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been a year now.

It’s been a year now since Derry. Since Eddie. 

Richie would like to think that he’s coping.

He’s been busy, that’s for sure. He’s actually gotten that Netflix special secured. They were willing to work with him after seeing his new material. Steve is ecstatic that for the first time in years, Richie’s career seems to be going up instead of plateauing. He’s had a few random shows here and there for promotional reasons. It was weird, the first time coming back. He’s not quite used to being himself on stage. There’s also the fact that he’s gained a very different audience. Lots of rainbow in the crowds now.

It’s nice. It distracts him from the reason he started writing his own material in the first place (“I knew it! I fucking knew it!”).

The Internet has adjusted. The skepticism wavers after Richie reminded everyone about how he’d literally never been seen with a woman and he was 40 fucking years old. People really start believing after his first few shows where he talks about being gay. They  _ definitely  _ start believing after Richie had gotten pissed off and posted a handy screenshot of the Grindr app installed on his phone.

There’s still very few people who think that it’s all a publicity stunt. That Richie has seen the fading popularity of his previous style of humor and jumped ship to save face. He doesn’t really care. The majority of people are proud. The Losers have been nothing but supportive. He knows, for the first time since he was 13, exactly who he is. He has the parts back, the  _ people  _ back, that he’s been missing.

Most of them, anyway.

He’s adopted a cat. He’d gotten sick of walking into his empty apartment and hearing radio silence. The quiet drove him crazy. It made it too easy to think. 

He’d walked into the apartment one day, listened, turned right back around and driven to the nearest shelter. He’d dubbed his new companion Lady Kevin. She is an incredibly hairy creature that is tiny under the small mountain of hair that makes up most of her body mass. He has cat hair on all of his clothes. Sometimes he watches her roll around on the rug and reflects on the fact that he’s pretty sure he’d kill someone for her. It’s nice, after all this time alone, to feel needed. To care for something else.

Especially if that something else will sit in his lap while he’s writing and purr, like a little furry space heater. (He doesn’t think of how lonely the warmth of another body makes him feel. He doesn’t think of rolling over on a lazy weekend morning to feel it. He doesn’t think about  _ him. _ )

He’s been talking to the Losers more. He’d added Patty to the group chat after his trip to Atlanta after months of no communication. They didn’t ask questions. She’d been accepted into the Loser’s Club entirely. Richie had been so happy he’d teared up a bit. He felt almost like a proud parent.

Now he really regrets being active in the chat at all because they are determined to ruin his fucking life evidently.

He’s been doing so well. The nightmares are down to once a week. It’s easier to get through life. He’s even started going out on a regular basis (still can’t hook up, still can’t help but see Eddie in everything- stop). 

So naturally he panics when Ben and Bev send an enthusiastic message to the group chat inviting all of them to the happy couple’s new beach house in California. Bev chimes in “yes, ALL of you guys :)” which Richie knows is not so much for Patty’s benefit as it is for his. He still hasn’t seen any of the rest of them outside of short video chats. It would be a dick move not to go, since he literally lives in Los Angeles and it’s a 40 minute drive, but his blood runs cold when he thinks about it.

Because yes, he’s been doing better, but he also knows deep down that he’s just been neatly placing his feelings about Eddie into a box and shoving them into a corner labelled “Do Not Fucking Touch”. The Losers have a way of getting to him like no other human being on Earth can. He knows they’re able to break down every careful wall he’s built up. Tear down all the progress he’s made.

He decides to go anyway. Of course he does. There’s no longer a scar across his palm (something so distinct about himself that he could never look at until it was gone), but he rubs a thumb across it anyways as he sends back “k i’ll be there”. 

The day arrives. He’s still trying to convince himself that everything will be fine. Patty will be there. Patty knows  _ everything _ . It will be fine. He’s already packed and unpacked a bag multiple times throughout the course of the week. He’s nervous as hell, which he knows is ridiculous since they’ve literally killed a fucking  _ alien clown  _ together, but it’s still weird to think about being all (not all- SHUT UP) together again.

It’s still weird while he’s making the drive to the beach house in Malibu.

It’s still weird when he’s knocking on the door.

It’s still weird when Ben answers the door and Richie can see everyone.

(Because it’s not everyone.)

It becomes less weird. Ben and Bev are excellent hosts. Bill is rambling about the book he’s writing when Richie walks in, and quickly resumes doing so after a brief greeting. Richie can’t help but notice the way Mike looks at him while he’s talking. It reminds Richie a lot of the way he would look at Eddie when he thought no one was paying attention to him.

After Derry, it seemed like divorce was the new hip thing to do. Bev had, of course, gotten a divorce from her shithead husband immediately upon her return and had won an impressive lawsuit that made headlines for weeks. 

Bill had also gotten divorced. Richie chalks it up to the abrupt personality change everyone had experienced after remembering their literal entire childhoods. Forgetting your formative years definitely does something weird to your brain.

Bill now spends more time at Mike’s house in Florida than he does at his own home. Richie has dourly ignored every picture of the two of them at the beach or some theme park. It’s impossible to ignore here. Mike looks at Bill like he hung the moon and Bill practically glows every time Mike understands his ideas and builds on them with ideas of his own. Richie looks at Patty who gives him a knowing glance in return. It reminds him so much of Stan it hurts to breathe for a moment.

He’s quiet. Usually he’s cracking jokes and performing Voices, but for now, he’s content to just sit there and listen to everyone else. (Ignores the fact that it’s because the person he’d usually be performing for and bickering with isn’t here, BE QUIET). 

Richie is forcibly dragged into participation whenever Bill starts running his fucking mouth.

“Yeah, man, why haven’t you come to see the rest of us?” he asks, good-natured but disguised as an accusation. “I think I’ve seen everyone  _ but  _ you.”

“Oh, you know,” says Richie, trying for light-hearted but falling just shy. “I’ve been busy. Writing and shit. Knitting tiny items of clothing for my cat.”

“I always knew you had that crazy cat lady vibe,” sing-songs Beverly. He suddenly feels too tired to come up with a clever response.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s me,” and it comes out much more  _ sad  _ than he means it to be. He tries to play it off with a smile, but everyone suddenly looks uncomfortable. Richie mentally kicks himself.

“Well,” says Bev, and looks at Ben. “Have you ever considered… putting yourself out there? Like meeting somebody?”

“What,” says Richie.

“I think it’d be good for you, honey,” says Bev, and Richie is frozen fucking solid.

He can’t. He’s tried. He’s tried his old method of getting blackout drunk for hookups, but even when he can barely remember his own name, he remembers neatly combed dark hair and thick eyebrows. He remembers spitfire conversation and telling him his jokes aren’t funny. He’d almost thrown up when he’d seen a guy who even  _ slightly  _ resembled Eddie, then he’d cried himself to sleep.

He can’t even handle a casual fling, so how the fuck is he supposed to actually  _ date  _ somebody? He can’t dump all of his fucking trauma on someone. There are only so many Pattys in the world. Richie doesn’t think he can handle loving someone who will end up leaving because they think he’s batshit crazy.

He’s not sure what face he’s making right now but it can’t be good judging by the looks on everyone’s faces right now. Everyone’s eyes are wide and they look like they’re watching a car crash in slow motion.

Except Patty.

Patty looks  _ heartbroken _ , and Richie is vaguely aware that he might be crying  _ again  _ goddamit he had just gotten this under control, but her expression is just so fucking sad. She looks like she knows exactly what he’s feeling right now and she probably does. He can’t imagine telling her to get over Stan and just move on.

It’s not the Losers’ fault. They don’t know. It still fucking hurts.

“Rich? You okay?” asks Mike.

Richie chokes.

“I fucking,” he says, “I  _ loved  _ him,” and just breaks down.

This is what he was afraid of. They know him better than anyone, and right now, he  _ hates  _ it. 

Patty crosses the room, sits next to him. She nudges him until his head rests on her shoulder. 

“I know, Richie,” she says. Runs a hand through his hair. He really doesn’t deserve her.

It seems like there’s a wave of realization that goes through the room. He sees it in Ben’s eyes first, then Bev. They look at each other and Beverly looks horrified. She covers her mouth.

Mike’s next. He looks confused and slightly frightened until he looks at Bill and realization dawns on his face. 

Bill’s the last to really pick up on why Richie’s reacting the way he is. 

“I’m so sorry, Richie,” says Bev, “I… I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry-”

“It’s fine,” Richie sniffles, “you couldn’t have known-”

“But we should have,” says Ben softly, wraps an arm around Bev. He looks shaken, like he’s realized that this was almost him. 

Richie finally sees the light in Bill’s eyes.

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “Eddie.”

“Yeah,” says Richie. “Eddie.”

Patty buries her face in his hair and squeezes him tight. He sighs and lets himself be held for a moment. It’s nice.  _ Damn Stan, you really outdid yourself, dude. _

“I can’t do it,” he starts. Swallows. “I’d just be looking for him. I think I always have been.”

“We’ve always been looking for each other,” says Bill. He glances at Mike, who in turn pretends like he wasn’t already staring at Bill.

“It wouldn’t be fair to anyone else,” Richie continues. “To always just have me looking for parts of him. And anyways, no one else would understand the shit that happened to us. I’d have to make up a whole new fucking life just so I didn’t get sent to the psych ward.”

It’s silent for a bit after that. Richie straightens up, still leaning slightly against Patty.

“You deserve it, though,” says Ben. “You deserve to have someone who loves you like you love- like you loved him.”

“Yeah, maybe,” says Richie, “but where the fuck am I going to find that? I mean, he was fucking  _ it  _ for me. And it just  _ sucks shit.  _ I’m so sad all the goddamn time. If I’m in my head for more than it takes to form one coherent thought, I’m thinking about him. I’m thinking about the rest of my life, and how I’m going to be the goddamn crazy cat lady until I kick it.”

Bev looks like she wants to crawl out of her skin.

“I feel like,” says Richie. Stops. He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes again and he just stopped fucking crying. “I feel like you all went somewhere I can’t follow. And I’m sitting outside banging on the fucking door even thought I  _ know  _ I can’t come in. I don’t get to.”

“Oh, Richie,” says Bev, and they all look so fucking sad now. Richie feels guilty. He’s about to apologize when Patty says something.

“Well, you’re out here with me,” she whispers. Gives him a tentative smile. “That’s not so bad.”

Richie gives her a wobbly smile back. She deserves that much. He looks at all of the Losers. Looks at the connections they form, even when they’re not thinking. Mike’s hand rests gently on Bill’s shoulder. Bev is pressed to Ben’s side. He isn’t jealous when he looks this time. He’s just happy that at least they got this, even if it couldn’t be him. He ignores the little part of him that still clamors for his own happy ending.

“Okay, we’re done with the soul-baring section of the evening,” says Richie. He wipes his eyes. “Bill, can you go back to talking about whatever the fuck you were saying about vampires. Please.”

Bill begins with, “Well, they’re not  _ technically  _ vampires…” which makes Bev cackle and Richie roll his eyes exaggeratedly, but he’s eternally grateful for the distraction.

The conversation the rest of the night is easy. It has to be, when they’ve known each other as long as they have. Richie is overtaken by a fierce love for every single person in the room.

They begin adjourning for the night around 11:30. Bill and Mike excuse themselves to their hotel, claiming to have big sightseeing plans in the morning. Patty taps out shortly after them, citing the fact that she’s ‘too old to be awake for the beginning of tomorrow’. Richie’s the last to leave, yelling “Love you!” as he does and having the sentiment returned twofold.

It’s not until he’s in bed in his apartment that he realizes his worst fear just came true. All of the Losers know he’s gay and know specifically about his love for Eddie.

And it’s fine.

They still love him. He still has a support system. He’s still not truly alone anymore.

And with this knowledge, he falls asleep with his cat curled in the bends of his knees, still lonely.

But not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter should be the beginning of the actual fix-it :)
> 
> my twitter is @peachyylosxr if you want to see some behind-the-scenes (not really it's mostly me making myself cry)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think you should come visit me and Bill,” finishes Mike. The sentence sounds far more careful than it should for such an innocent request.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit shorter than some of the other chapters! writing it was an absolute beating for some reason but i hope you still enjoy!

It’s about 2 weeks later when Mike calls.

Richie had been in the middle of trying out a new bit in front of Lady Kevin, who had watched him with a similar expression to some of the ones his mom would make when he was younger. Tired, but willing to humor him. It’s remarkable how expressive she can be sometimes.

He picks up on the first ring. 

“What’s up?” he asks, meandering into his kitchen with the cat close at his heels. “Knew you couldn’t stay away from me that long, Mikey. Nobody can resist the Tozier charm. I’m like a siren.” 

“I’m good, Richie,” says Mike, unfazed. Richie forgets sometimes that they can just ignore half the bullshit that comes out of his mouth in favor of paying attention to the real things he says. “I actually wanted-”

“How’s Bill?” interrupts Richie with a smile in his voice. Bill has finally moved in with Mike in Florida. The pictures they send in the group chat are sickeningly domestic. Richie relishes every opportunity he has to good-naturedly make fun of them while ignoring the fact that it still sends a sliver of something through his chest that whispers  _ you could have had this, once _ . 

“Bill is fine,” says Mike. He sounds  _ so  _ fond. “He’s supposed to be working on the new book right now but,” his voice fades from the phone speaker, “HE’S ACTUALLY ON A WIKIPEDIA DEEP-DIVE AGAIN.”

“It’s RESEARCH,” Richie hears Bill respond from somewhere in their house, and laughs.

“We’ve all been there, all us famous successful writer-types,” drawls Richie, taking on the air of a Hollywood celebrity who thinks entirely too much of themselves. “It’s alllll part of the  _ process.  _ You wouldn’t understand, of course. Simple folk like you.”

Mike laughs and Richie knows it’s just to humor him. 

“I did actually want to talk to you about something,” says Mike. Richie hoists himself up onto the counter, Lady Kevin following suit and butting her head against him in defiance that something else has his attention.

“Shoot,” says Richie, and he sounds more nervous than he means to.

“I think…” says Mike. He pauses for a moment and the dread gets immediately denser in Richie’s stomach. He feels nauseous, like this conversation is about to turn somewhere he really doesn’t want it to.

See, the Losers know now that Richie was in love with Eddie. What they don’t know is literally anything else. No one’s prodded him since that night. He thinks they’ve all taken the stance that if they just leave him alone, he’ll open up to them in his own time. This might be true, but his own time is still not fucking  _ now. _

“I think you should come visit me and Bill,” finishes Mike. The sentence sounds far more careful than it should for such an innocent request. 

“Just little ol’ me?” asks Richie, suspicious.

“Yeah,” says Mike. “Just you. It could be fun!”

“Uh huh,” says Richie. Let him stew in it. He will provide no further commentary until Mike has cracked.

“...You and Bill could talk about writing?”

Silence.

“We could all catch up! It doesn’t always have to be all the Losers in one place, right? As much as I love all you guys, it’s just impractical to get sev- six people together all the time. It could just be the three of us!”

Nothing.

Mike sighs. It’s really easy to crack him if Richie just stays silent, which is a trick he’s been perfecting since middle school. “I have something I need to talk to you about. It’s something... It’s something I don’t think any of the others will understand.”

“Oh, shit,” says Richie. “If you need pointers on being gay, I’m all too happy to provide. You see, when a man loves another man very much, he-”

“Rich, I’m serious,” pleads Mike, and  _ oh shit _ , he actually is. His tone is far too close to the last time Richie got a serious phone call from him. Richie is vaguely aware of his heart somewhere in his throat.

“Uh, okay,” says Richie. “When do you want me there?”

“As soon as possible,” says Mike. Fuck.

“Righty-o, good man,” says Richie in a weak English accent. 

“Just tell me when you’re on the way,” says Mike. Richie swallows, says ‘yep’ and hangs up.

It turns out that Richie is on the way 2 days later. He’s met at the airport by an enthusiastic Mike and Bill, who both wrap him in a hug as soon as they see him. It’s still jarring, he thinks. Every time they see each other again, that they’re reminded they’ll never forget each other, is nothing short of a miracle.

Mike and Bill’s house is reminiscent of a cabin, which is fucking bizarre for  _ Florida  _ but somehow it works. The inside is all warm light and wood logs and  _ books _ on every surface. It’s very homey. It seems like it belongs somewhere in the mountains. It suits them.

They show him to the guest room, give him a tour of the house. They’re in the kitchen drinking some fancy aged liquor that Richie can’t be bothered to remember the name of despite the numerous times Bill has mentioned it, talking about Bill’s book and Richie’s shows and Mike’s new job working in a local college library. There’s a lull in the conversation, and Mike clears his throat and looks at Bill meaningfully. Richie sighs and takes a swig of his drink.

“So,” Mike begins. He looks  _ incredibly  _ nervous. “You know how Bill and I went through the library before I moved, right? And he helped me go through some of the books and materials before we left?”

“Yeah,” says Richie, oddly relieved that they’re going to talk about some weird cryptic Derry bullshit instead of his own weird cryptic feelings bullshit.

“We found something,” says Bill. “Mentions of something old. An entity. Older than It.”

Richie’s blood runs cold.

“Are you fucking serious,” he says. He can’t do this shit again. He can’t deal with another fucking murderous goddamn alien. He would sooner throw himself into the Pacific.

Mike puts his hand on Bill’s head. “You’re scaring him.”

“I realize now that sounded incredibly ominous,” says Bill, leaning into Mike’s touch. “This one is good, we think.”

“Oh, you fucking  _ think, _ ” says Richie.

“Just let me talk,” says Mike, not unkindly. “Maturin is a benevolent being. He’s actually worshipped as a god in some cultures.”

Richie refills his glass.

“He’s incredibly powerful, but doesn’t typically involve himself with humans,” Mike continues. “Most of the time he resides within his shell-”

“His fucking  _ what, _ ” says Richie. 

“He takes the form of a turtle,” says Bill sheepishly.

Richie drains the glass and fills it again. Bill looks only slightly despondent at the rate his fancy liquor is disappearing. 

“There’s a reason we’re telling you this, Richie,” says Mike. Looks at Bill. “We found… a ritual.”

Richie eyes the entire bottle. Bill places it just out of his reach.

“No offense, Mike, but the last ritual didn’t exactly turn out stellar,” says Richie.

“This one is different,” says Mike, and he has that same pleading tone in his voice as he’d had after they’d found out that the Ritual of Chud didn’t work. “Maturin is different. This one will work.”

Richie groans. “What the fuck are you trying to do now?”

“Richie…” says Mike. “This one is used to revive the dead. We think it could bring back Stan. And Eddie.”

Richie goes hot and cold at the same time and thinks he might throw up. 

“This is not fucking funny, Mike,” he says, and it sounds weak even to him.

“I’m not joking,” Mike responds quietly.

“Hear us out,” says Bill.

They start explaining.

The ritual they’d discovered had been tucked in the inside of a nature encyclopedia residing on one of the dusty shelves in Mike’s old living space. It was written in a language neither Mike nor Bill had recognized, so they’d sent it in to one of Mike’s historian contacts in order to decipher it. The paper with the ritual had been bounced along for almost as long as Mike had been out of Derry. They’d just gotten a translation back the week before Mike had called Richie.

Richie knows better than to hope. After all, the last ritual Mike had found had failed spectacularly. He was a first-hand witness for that one. There’s still a small part of him that wants it to work so badly it wraps around his heart and  _ squeezes.  _ He knows hope, especially about this, is dangerous. 

Richie’s been doing well in the grief-processing department. He’s moving on with his life. He’s writing his own material, he has a cat (hasn’t been looking for anything in the romantic department, but he thinks he can forgive himself this one thing).

“If this doesn’t work,” says Richie. Falters. He leaves it unsaid. He hopes they don’t know exactly what he was about to say - if this doesn’t work, he’s not sure if his life can go back to normal again. If this doesn’t work, if he’s been picked up off the ground with hope and then thrown right back down, he doesn’t think he can get back up again. It’s taken so much work, it’s been  _ so hard  _ to get to this point. This is the kind of thing that could shatter all of that work in a heartbeat and leave Richie to pick up the pieces. If he even can.

“It will,” says Mike, and he sounds so confident Richie almost believes him. He pauses like he’s about to say something else.

“If you say ‘if you believe it will’ I’m fucking off back to California and letting you two deal with this shit,” says Richie. That phrase is the last fucking thing he wants to hear right now.

Mike goes silent. That bastard.

“I think it’s worth a shot, Rich,” says Bill. “I think we owe them that much. Just to try.”

“Why me?” asks Richie. “Why did you want me to help? I’ve always been the one to pussy out.”

“But you weren’t,” says Bill. “You always came back. You never really left.” He grins. “Even after I punched you in the face.”

“Yeah, fuck you for that, by the way,” laughs Richie, and thinks about what Bill said. He  _ has  _ always come back. He came back the first time they fought It. He came back the second time too, even though that time he had a car and definitely could have gotten the fuck out of Dodge. 

“This is the same thing,” says Mike earnestly. “We’re not leaving Eddie and Stan behind.”

“We really think it’ll work, Richie,” says Bill with the same look in his eyes he’d had in the summer of 1989. 

Richie doesn’t know how to tell them no. He doesn’t think it will work, but there’s still that part of him that dares to hope.

(He sees Eddie in their apartment, cooking breakfast much earlier than Richie would normally get up. He sees himself press a kiss to Eddie’s temple and wrap his arms around Eddie’s waist.)

“Okay,” he says. “What do I need to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i may have lied a little bit... i meant that this is the beginning of the actual fix-it in the sense that we're moving on with the story beyond focusing on richie's grief :^) sorry!!! 
> 
> twitter is @peachyylosxr, you're welcome to come hang out and yell about fruit with me!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s pretty sure they’re ending the research phase soon. At least, he’s ending the research phase soon. Richie is almost certain that if he was not there to intervene, Mike and Bill would spend the rest of their lives researching together in weird, scholarly bliss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry in advance if this is formatted weird i’m uploading it from my phone!

Richie stays at Mike and Bill’s for far longer than he meant to.

In his defense, he’s been busy.

He’s been helping both of them go through every single book, magazine, newspaper, or photo that could possibly have anything to do with Maturin. They’ve studied the ritual text over and over again. Richie’s read more actual books in the past couple of months than he has since he graduated high school.

(Months? It’s been months? That’s too hard to think about. Can’t think about how much you’re starting to hope.)

He’s pretty sure they’ve got a solid game plan now. They have the ritual text memorized so deeply front and back they dream of it. 

(Richie ignores the other dreams that have been happening. Eddie, asleep against wihte sheets. Eddie, coming back from a morning run. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. They’re products of something hopeful Richie can’t ask himself to believe in.)

Ben and Bev know that something is up. They’d known since they realized that Richie was with Mike and Bill and didn’t tell them about the visit. They’d especially known since they asked Richie to come over about a week ago and he’d had to tell them he was still in Florida. 

They’re worried. He can tell as much whenever Ben calls him to ‘make sure he’s taking care of himself’, which is Nice Ben terms for ‘please don’t be doing something fucking stupid’. Richie doesn’t care. For that matter, neither does Mike. Or Bill. They’re dead focused on the task at hand. He’s pretty sure the only reason that either of the other men have eaten is because Richie will periodically get bored and decide to cook something. They will, predictably, come into the kitchen once they smell whatever he’s making, as if they’re reminded that human beings need to eat sometimes.

Patty is worried too. Ben and Bev had called her to tell her what was going on. When she called Richie, he had explained everything. He felt this was something he couldn’t keep from her. He feels that she’d be more inclined to believe in this than Ben and Bev would, too - Stan always had a weird sense of fate that she trusted in wholeheartedly. 

What he hadn’t expected was the sheer amount of  _ hope  _ that was in her voice. It’s a sharp, despairing thing, this new hope. He remembers walking through her house late at night when he’d visited (nightmares. They’ve mostly stopped now, but he’d woken that night gasping for breath with tears streaming down his face and the feeling of blood on his hands.) He’d found her also awake, sitting in the living room. She’d been wrapped in some dad-esque cardigan he’d immediately known had belonged to Stan. Richie had just sat next to her, held her. They’d both cried.

Instead of the reaction Richie thought he’d get, he’d gotten Patty’s voice soft with something he couldn’t name but sounded a whole lot like love.

“You really think this’ll work?” she asks. He doesn’t have the heart to say no.

“It fucking better,” says Richie. He considers a follow-up, but leaves it at that. This had better fucking work.

He’s pretty sure they’re ending the research phase soon. At least, he’s ending the research phase soon. Richie is almost certain that if he was not there to intervene, Mike and Bill would spend the rest of their lives researching together in weird, scholarly bliss. 

“I found something else!” yells Bill. He knocks over the stack of books on the table next to him. “I- fuck. You guys, look at this!”

Mike and Richie dutifully do as he says. It’s an old book, yellow and well-worn with creases in its dog-eared pages. 

“It’s talking about the ritual,” says Bill. “This whole book is full of ancient traditions. This one is from a section on Maturin. Evidently there used to be a whole cult following the Turtle-”

“Bill,” says Richie in a  _ very  _ patient tone. This could take all goddamn day. Bill is an excellent storyteller. “Can you  _ please  _ get to the fucking point.”

Bill looks only slightly put out. “It has to happen on a full moon. That’s not in the original ritual text. This also provides a diagram of what we have to do.”

Mike looks so in love Richie has to look away for a second. “Of course. Full moons bring the most energy.”

Richie gags. “Do I need to leave the fucking room?”

Bill smacks him. “You can leave the fucking house,” but he doesn’t mean it. 

It’s actually incredibly helpful, what Bill found. See, the ritual text, roughly translated, had sounded something like this:

_ Draw a five-point star and enclose it in ash. All start and end points. You need items that remind you who they are, items that remind them who they can be, and items that remind you how you love them. This happens when the magic is higher and closest to Maturin. _

The five-point star was fairly self-explanatory, but the rest of the translation was lacking in detail. The diagram Bill had found had been lovingly rendered in detail  _ with captions in English.  _ Now it’s clear what exactly they’re supposed to do on a full fucking moon, because  _ of course. _

The diagram shows a pentagram (because  _ of fucking course!!! _ ) drawn with ash. They’re supposed to place items at each of the points on the star: an item to represent each person’s weakness and one to represent each person’s strength. At the remaining point they’re supposed to place an item that represents their ties to the deceased. There’s something they’re supposed to say too, but Richie’s tapped out at that part. Mike can deal with that shit.

“Well,” says Mike. “Guess we have to get all that shit. Any ideas?”

“I have one,” says Richie. “I have. Uh. I took Eddie’s extra inhaler? When we were in Derry. It’s still in California though. I think that would work for the weakness thing. And I can go talk to Patty to see about Stan’s stuff.”

“Okay Mr. Expendable Income,” says Mike, as if his boyfriend does not also have a ridiculous amount of money. “See you soon.”

Richie’s cross-country trip in Mike’s old beaten-to-shit truck to find the items to save his friends goes as follows:

1\. He goes back to California.

He’s greeted in his apartment by Lady Kevin, who is delighted upon his brief return and will not stay out from under his feet. 

“Sorry, dude,” he mutters, “not gonna be really back for a hot minute. Just dropping by.”

The cat chirps to get his attention as he goes to retrieve what he was looking for.

He finds the inhaler right where he left it in his bedside table drawer.

2\. He goes back to Derry.

He does not want to be back here, but it seems better somehow. More awake. The people look like they know where they are, instead of listlessly drifting like they have been for hundreds of years. Derry is waking up.

He walks back through the town and finds himself standing in front of the Neibolt house. The ground is smooth where the house used to lay but littered with debris.

He picks up a broken fence post.

(If you believe it does.)

3\. He goes back to Atlanta.

Patty greets him at the door, confused but a gracious host as always. He explains what he needs from her.

“I think I understand,” she says. She leaves and comes back with two items.

One is a small bouquet of wildflowers, pressed in a notebook from their wedding.

“He was strong then,” she says, eyes a million miles away. “His parents… you know how they were. I fell in love with him a thousand times over that day.”

The other item she gives him is a puzzle piece.

“He never finished it,” she says. “He was working on it when he got that call.”

(I took myself off the board. Did it work?)

(No. It didn’t.)

4\. He goes back to Florida.

Mike and Bill observe what he’s brought back a week and a half later, faces somber. They don’t know the story behind what Richie’s brought back for Stan but he thinks they can feel it anyways.

“You better appreciate this shit,” Richie says. Levity. That’s what he can give. It’s what he always gives. “Took me fucking forever.”

“We always appreciate you, Richie,” says Mike, missing the point completely.

Richie groans and heads to their guest room to sleep for 48 hours straight.

Unfortunately for them, the full moon for that month had happened four days ago. This means that they have far too much time to spend on edge and  _ waiting. _

__ They burn through probably a small forest’s worth of firewood in order to get enough ash not only for the actual pentagram but also for a practice pentagram, which turns out to not be a bad idea after Bill’s practice pentagram drawn in their basement floor comes out with six points.

They stare at it in silence for a moment.

“That’s the Star of David,” says Richie. “I’m sure Stan would appreciate the gesture, but I’m not sure it’s super practical for what we’re doing-”

“Beep beep, Richie,” says Mike, smothering a laugh as he heads upstairs to grab a broom.

“You fucking do it then!” says Bill, handing him the jar of ash. 

Richie does try. His turns out with five points.

“See, it’s in the name Bill,” says Richie. “ _ Penta-  _ means five.”

“I know my fucking root words! I’m a critically acclaimed author!” says Bill, doing his best to sound affronted.

“I don’t know about _critically acclaimed...”_

“Don’t make me kick your ass!”

“Hey, that looks good!” says Mike, coming back downstairs. Richie gives Bill an extremely smug look and receives a middle finger for his efforts.

The rest of the month is waiting. Richie is done with research, so he decides to spend the rest of his time at Mike and Bill’s getting a horrific sunburn that fades into some interesting tan lines. He visits some places Mike and Bill have told him about - a small cafe in the next town over, a comic book store reminiscent of the one he’d enjoyed visiting until the other boys had started pushing him out (“What do you want, faggot? Get the fuck out!”). He visits a bakery that Mike had told him about. When he mentions he’s a friend of Mike’s the woman behind the counter gasps in delight and sends him back to their house with no less than three pies.

He’s working on a piece of the pecan when Bill finds him. He can feel the nervous energy radiating off of him from across the kitchen.

“It’s almost time,” says Bill. 

“Mffm,” responds Richie.

“It’s tomorrow night,” says Bill, unimpressed by Richie’s reaction.

Richie responds this time by choking.

“Shit,” he coughs. “That’s soon.”

“All of this will be worth it,” says Bill. The thing about Bill is that he really believes in the things he says. It’s what made all of them follow him in the first place. It’s why they still do to some degree.

“Hope so,” says Richie. Takes another bite of pie before he says something he regrets.

“It  _ will _ ,” says Bill. He cuts a slice of apple and one of buttermilk and carries them off into the basement.

Richie wants it to. He wants it more than anything.

That’s why he’s standing in the basement with them during the full moon the next night.

He draws the pentagram outlined in a circle of ash. He places the items carefully at each point - the inhaler, the fence post, the puzzle piece, the bouquet, and finally, the item to represent their ties to each other. It’s a picture of them all together on Richie’s front porch. He remembers it clearly; the sticky hands from popsicles long-melted and the whining about having to take a picture. They all look incredibly happy. Eddie’s face is blue practically from ear to ear. 

There’s candles surrounding the area. Richie doesn’t think they’re necessary, but they definitely help set the mood. 

“Are you ready?” asks Mike.

“I mean, no,” says Richie.

“T-too bad!” says Bill, aiming for cheerful but his stutter betraying him. It only shows up when he’s angry or nervous now, and Richie suspects the latter.

Mike begins.

They close their eyes as he chants something in a language that Richie doesn’t recognize. He sees a glow from behind his eyelids, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, it  _ feels  _ like something is happening - 

Richie opens his eyes.

Nothing is there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> my twitter is @peachyylosxr !


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. It’s over now. This numb feeling like TV static has taken over Richie’s body and the only thing he can feel now is tired. Anything else, he thinks, would be too much to handle. Bill pads across the room and sits on the other side of Mike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) but less ominous this time

They’re all just standing in shocked silence. Mike makes a noise almost like a whimper.

Richie feels like his heart just fell to the floor.

They stare at the circle. The candles flicker, casting shadows on the wall.

Mike slumps to the floor. Bill looks like he’s about to go catatonic.

“Nothing’s happening,” says Richie, and his voice cracks.

“FUCK,” says Mike, puts his face in his hands. “I thought… I really thought this might work. We did everything right. It’s not working. I’m so sorry. It happened - it  _ fucking _ .” He takes a deep breath. “I failed you. Again.”

“You didn’t…” says Richie. He trails off and sits on the floor next to Mike. Mike leans into his shoulder. He can feel Mike’s body shake with exhausted, disappointed sobs. He decides against saying anything else.

Richie thinks he knows maybe this wouldn’t work. He’s been more than skeptical from the get-go, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t felt that little thing in his chest that said ‘what if’, what if it had worked, what if they had Stan back, what if they had  _ Eddie  _ back, what if Richie had gotten to have love like the rest of them-

Well. It’s over now. This numb feeling like TV static has taken over Richie’s body and the only thing he can feel now is tired. Anything else, he thinks, would be too much to handle. Bill pads across the room and sits on the other side of Mike.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly to no one in particular. Neither of them respond.

They stay like that for a while on Bill and Mike’s basement floor. When they do return upstairs, they leave the circle as is. They can’t bear to sweep away the past months of their lives.

Richie barricades himself in the guest room and breaks down.

\---

Deep within the cosmos, something old and beyond comprehension hears the desperate pleas of the ones who vanquished an old enemy. It hears the same plea reflected through three other voices.

In the home of an author and a librarian, three souls mourn a loss so deeply it rings through the stars. 

In a house turned home, two souls worry that they’re about to lose more friends.

In a home turned house, a woman, alone, puts away a set of matching mugs with tears in her eyes.

The Thing feels compassion. They deserve better than they got.

And within the cosmos, two presences stir.

\---

Bev and Ben arrive with Patty in tow about a week later. Bill had asked them to come help clean up. None of the rest of them had been able to go down there by themselves. 

Patty wraps Richie in a hug the moment she sees him. She doesn’t say anything, but he can feel the grief radiating off of her mingling with his own. 

After quiet greetings and inviting everyone in, they go down to the basement. Richie is the last to enter.

Something happens this time.

It’s almost like a dream, the way it happens. One moment, they’re all standing in the basement, and the next, they’re standing in a vast, unending galaxy. It’s not jarring. It’s like coming home.

“Oh,” breathes Patty, and Richie looks up. 

There is a giant  _ fucking turtle  _ floating above them. Its eyes shift, reflecting the stars’ glow.

“Maturin,” says Mike, awed.

THEY CANNOT COME BACK UNLESS THEY WANT TO, it says.

THEY HAVE HAD TO MAKE A DECISION.

SHAME AND UNCERTAINTY MAKE MEN WEAK.

Richie realizes with a jolt why they might be hesitant to come back. He thinks about Patty finding Stan in the bathtub and how she’s told him, tearfully, that she’d give anything to see him again. He’d be terrified to let someone like that down.

And Eddie. From what Richie can tell, Eddie didn’t have a lot to go back to in New York. He’d taken the backseat most of his life, let his mom and Myra and his boss tell him what to do, where to go, what pills to take, who to be. He’s never had to be the one to make hard decisions. This is one Eddie had to make himself, and Richie is so, so immensely proud of him in that moment that he feels like he’s practically glowing.

THEY ARE READY NOW.

THEY SEE YOU.

“Thank you,” Richie breathes, and it shifts its attention toward him.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE, it says. SORRY FOR THE WAIT. IT’S BEEN A WHILE.

Then they’re back in the basement. 

“What the fuck was that?” asks Bev.

Richie ignores her because in the middle of the circle are Eddie and Stan, slumped on the floor. Patty covers her mouth as her eyes well with tears.

“Eddie?” asks Richie. Both of the men stir, sit up. 

“Hey,” says Eddie, at the same time as Stan says “Patty?”

Patty almost tackles him back to the ground, sobbing.

“I love you,” she cries, muffled into his shoulder.

Stan looks so glad to be alive in that moment that Richie knows he doesn’t regret coming back at all.

He drifts, subconsciously, to Eddie. He always has.

“Hey, Rich,” says Eddie again, and Richie wraps him in a bear hug without even thinking about it. He can feel the tears rolling down his face as Eddie wraps his arms around Richie.

“Oh my God,” says Ben. “It actually worked.”

“G-guess we all had to b-b-be in one place,” says Bill, and he sounds absolutely shell shocked.

“Lucky Seven,” says Bev, and Richie can hear the smile in her voice. “Or eight, now, I guess.”

Richie lets go of Eddie and just  _ looks  _ at him. There’s a scar on his cheek where Bowers had stabbed him and presumably one where It had impaled him though the abdomen, but other than that, there’s no sign that he had been broken beyond repair.

“What the fuck are  _ you  _ looking at,” says Eddie, but there’s no venom behind it. He looks happy and tired and  _ alive _ . 

“Okay, share,” says Bev, and wraps Eddie in a hug. Ben joins her, and Bill and Mike follow. They all end up in a teary cuddle-pile on the basement floor, clinging to each other with the sheer joy of being together.

\---

Eddie enjoys the sheer joy of being alive and with the rest of the Losers before he remembers the shape that his life had been in before he died.

“Oh fuck,” he says. “What the  _ fuck  _ am I going to tell Myra?”

Something too quick to name flashes across Richie’s face. 

“Actually,” he says, clears his throat. Eddie tracks the movement of his Adam’s apple and averts his eyes as he realizes what he’s doing. “Your marriage is over, I think.”

“Oh,” says Eddie, mildly offended and massively relieved. “So she wouldn’t even have to know?”

Richie looks surprised. “I mean, I guess not.”

“I don’t have to get a divorce or anything?” asks Eddie. He sounds like a kid who just got told he doesn’t have to do any homework over the weekend.

“Nnnnnope,” replies Richie. “Coming back from the dead like this is kind of weird.”

“No shit,” says Eddie. He starts laughing borderline hysterically. “You’re fucking telling me, dude!”

“‘Dude?’” asks Richie, grinning. “I brought you back from the fucking dead and the best I get is  _ dude _ ?”

“Are you  _ actually  _ going to fucking do this right now, Richie, I DID JUST COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, YOU ASSHOLE-”

“I’m just saying, it was mostly me, you could show a little respect-”

“Oh-ho-ho,  _ no _ , you dick, what do you want me to do, call you Your Royal Goddamn Highness or some shit-”

And nothing has changed. Eddie is so grateful in that moment that his friends are so fucking stubborn that they’d bring him back like this.

After he quits bickering, though, he remembers, again, that it’s not going to be that easy.

“Oh, shit,” he says, “I have to find a place to stay.”

“You can stay with me,” offers Richie, so fast that Eddie is taken aback. “I have too much space anyways. The downside of being a rich asshole.”

“You would do that?” asks Eddie.

“Yeah,” says Richie. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I do have a cat, and I think you said something about being allergic at one point-”

“I’m not,” says Eddie. “That sounds nice, actually.”

“Oh,” says Richie. “Okay.”

“What, did you not actually mean it?” says Eddie testily. “I can fuck right off and find somewhere else if I’m going to be  _ in your way _ -”

“No,” says Richie. “I want you. Uh, I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” says Eddie.

They’re quiet for a moment.

“Where are we?” asks Stan. “This looks like a cult cave.”

The woman Eddie assumes is Patty stifles a laugh and Bill looks offended as Mike explains that it’s their house. 

“You two are living together?” asks Eddie, raising an eyebrow.

Bill  _ blushes  _ and Eddie puts two and two together really quickly.

“Oh shit,” he says, and Mike laughs.

They head upstairs, Eddie trailing behind Richie. Patty clings to Stan’s hand like she’s scared he’ll disappear if she lets go.

Their house is nice, Eddie thinks. It’s very homey.

They talk for a while to get Eddie and Stan filled in on everything that’s been going on. The fact that Bev and Ben are together comes as a surprise to no one. Stan is incredibly dismayed to learn that Richie and Patty get along like a house on fire.

“How’d you know Myra was with someone else?” asks Eddie when the conversation lulls.

“Research,” says Richie, and his face flushes. “I wanted to be able to tell you anything you needed to know if it worked.”

“Huh,” says Eddie, and leaves it at that. 

He doesn’t want to think about the implications that Richie stalking his ex-wife on Facebook holds, because here’s the thing:

He remembers dying. He also remembers right before he died. He remembers hearing Richie  _ screaming  _ his name, that they could have helped him, not to leave him down there, before it all went black. He also remembers how much love he’d felt.

“You didn’t do any research for me,” says Stan.

“I went to your fucking house!” says Richie.

Eddie doesn’t jump back into the conversation. He’s content to just watch and be glad that he has this.

After they clean up the basement, Mike and Bill go about setting everyone up with a place to sleep. Eddie is assigned to the air mattress in Bill’s office.

Once he goes to sleep he does not wake up for 14 hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we can only go up from here! eddie is okay btw, i realize the last line might read as ominous but our boy is just tired! coming back from the dead is hard work!
> 
> twitter is @peachyylosxr


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie wakes up and has a split second before he remembers what happened the day before.
> 
> Stan is alive.
> 
> Eddie is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took so long!!

Richie wakes up and has a split second before he remembers what happened the day before.

Stan is alive.

_ Eddie  _ is alive.

Richie has to take a moment to evaluate, because his life since Derry has been this:

He’s been banking on the idea that Eddie would never come back. He’d come to peace with the idea that he was going to be alone (not lonely, but alone) for the rest of his life, that he’d never have that matching half that Bev, Ben, Bill, and Mike seemed to have found.

Now that Eddie’s alive, he has a lot of recalibration to do. He’s looking forward to it.

Richie trudges downstairs, half awake and wholly wanting to see Eddie again, to make sure that he hadn’t made all of the previous day’s events up in a desperate bid to change his reality. He finds his way to the kitchen, where Eddie is already awake and having an animated discussion on the phone.

“You’d better figure it the fuck out, then, because I didn’t work in a job I hated for 20 fucking years to just throw everything  _ I  _ earned to my ex-wife’s new husband,” Eddie snaps. Ah. The joys of coming back from the dead. 

He hangs up his new phone (Mike had left, early morning, to make a trip into town) in a way that makes Richie believe if he had a flip phone, he would have slammed it shut.

“Mornin’,” says Richie.

“ _ God _ ,” says Eddie, exasperated. “Good morning. Stay here. I want you to help me.”

“Oh?” says Richie, heart suddenly racing. “Whatcha need?”

“I have to call Myra,” Eddie says with a grimace. “I feel like I owe her an explanation.”

“Mm,” grunts Richie noncommittally, because he absolutely does not agree.

“I just need you here so you’ll make fun of me if I pussy out,” Eddie says, face softer now. “For moral support.”

That makes Richie choke up a bit, so he nods in solidarity.

“Okay, here goes,” says Eddie. He takes a deep breath and dials a number. 

“Myra?” he says in a tone that sounds like he’s bracing for impact.

Richie hears her scream “EDDIE?” from his spot five feet away.

It goes about as well as Richie had expected it to. Eddie is beet-red and practically steaming within 2 minutes.

“For the  _ four hundredth time _ ,” he says, seething, “ _ no _ , I am not on drugs. Yes, I’m sure I’m not coming back. I told you I probably wouldn’t come back before I even  _ left  _ for Derry.”

Huh. 

“No, I don’t want to fucking talk about it!” Eddie says. He sounds like he’s making a valiant effort to not scream. He’s silent for a moment, listening, then explodes: “NO! I NEVER NEEDED ANY OF THAT SHIT!” He visibly attempts to calm himself down before continuing, strangled, “The allergies were never real. You knew this. I knew this, to some degree. I literally just ate a cashew and I was fi- Oh my God, I’M FINE!”

Eddie looks at Richie, a little desperately, and Richie gives him a thumbs up. Eddie flips Richie the bird, but he smiles (grimly, but he smiles), so Richie got what he wanted.

They talk for a while, long enough for everyone else to amble their ways through the kitchen and pretend like they aren’t listening. Bill over-fills his coffee mug and dumps almost half the pot on the floor because he’s so invested in “not-listening”.

When he hangs up, Eddie looks both angry and triumphant, an expression Richie is familiar with. It’s the same one he wears when he’s just won an argument, but from the sound of it, he hasn’t exactly won this one.

“So she’s just getting everything?” Richie asks.

“I guess so,” says Eddie. “If I can get my bank situation sorted out then I can find a place on my own. I don’t give a shit about my house or anything, it was never mine to begin with.” He looks a little sad. “I miss my car, though.”

“We can get you a car,” Richie says before he can stop himself. He keeps talking, though, because he’s never been one to know when to stop. “I have like, way too much money, dude.”

“No kidding,” Eddie snorts. “Can’t believe you get paid to stand on stage and say the same garbage that every shitty male comedian since forever has said.”

“I told you I didn’t write my own material,” says Richie, grinning.

“I knew,” says Eddie, then, “Would you actually buy me a car?”

“Yeah,” says Richie, “anything you need. Can’t be easy coming back from the dead.”

“That’s… really nice of you, Rich,” Eddie says. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Richie says, then has to deflect, “I’ve always wanted to be a sugar daddy.” He cackles at Eddie’s spluttering rage and is suddenly so very glad that Eddie is alive. He can’t stop just  _ looking _ at him, taking in every aspect of Eddie as though he’s reassuring himself that Eddie is okay.

—-

Richie keeps  _ looking  _ at Eddie. It’s driving Eddie insane.

Every time he turns around, Richie is just staring at him like he’s a marvel of nature. It ought to be infuriating.

He can’t make himself tell Richie off, though. When he catches Richie’s gaze, it makes him flush and look away nearly every goddamn time. He wants to kick himself. Or maybe Richie. 

It’s all so goddamn confusing.

He prides himself on his practicality, which means as soon as Mike came back with a phone for him (Stan had not requested one, but he and Patty are so wrapped up in each other at the moment that he wouldn’t be surprised if Stan just hadn’t been paying attention), Eddie was on the phone with the bank, who kindly informed him of all the fucking hoops he’d have to jump through just to get his shit back.

It’s actually surprisingly few. Coming back from the dead is easier than he thought it would be.

Myra was the difficult call, but having Richie there, bleary-eyed and eating Bill’s fancy cereal and giving him a  _ stupid  _ thumbs-up, helped somehow. 

The rest of his nosy fucking friends help too. Mike pats him on the shoulder as he makes his way through the kitchen. 

After he hangs up, proud of himself for going through with it and taking control of his own fucking life for once ( _ you’re braver than you think  _ echoes through his head and he stomps it down violently enough that it causes a twinge of actual pain behind his eye) and also upset, because practically everything he’s done in his life means jack shit at this point. 

Bev wanders back into the kitchen for more coffee, and taps at his ankle with her own foot lightly as she passes. “How’d it go, Eddie?”

“How do you think it went, Beverly?” he says, suddenly very tired. “Shitty. It went shitty.”

“Like you didn’t hear how it went,” says Richie, and there’s that shit-eating grin that means he’s about to say something just to piss Eddie off, “he was loud enough I think my cat heard him in California.”

“ _ Shut the fuck up, _ ” Eddie hisses. “There’s no  _ goddamn  _ way-”

“Nah, she’s pretty talented, she probably did hear you-”

“What does this cat even  _ look  _ like, anyway?” Eddie asks, not in the mood to bicker any more right now. He’s done enough of that with the bank and with his ex-wife, who he’s sure is still convinced that he’s somewhere in Maine blasted out of his mind on drugs. He pointedly hadn’t told her where he was right now because he does  _ not  _ want to deal with her jumping on a plane and showing up on Bill and Mike’s front doorstep. 

Richie looks delighted and pulls out his phone to show Eddie about 300 pictures of his ridiculously hairy cat, which Bev coos over and Eddie appraises cautiously. 

“She won’t hate me, right?” Eddie asks. “If I’m going to be living with this thing she better not try to eat me in my sleep.”

“Nah, dude, she’s a total attention whore,” Richie says. “She loves anyone who will scratch behind her ears.”

“Be nice to Kevin!” Bev scolds, rinsing her mug in the sink. “She’s a sweetheart, you’ll love her,” she says, directing the last statement toward Eddie.

“Mmm,” says Eddie, noncommittal and slightly nervous. He’d never really been around pets, except Bill’s fish when they were younger and the Australian shepherd that had lived on the Hanlons’ farm.

“You will,” Richie says. “She’s pretty much the best cat. Ever.”

“You’re biased,” says Eddie, but he’s reassured somewhat.

The rest of the day passes hazily, a blur of nervous hands and concerned faces. Everyone, especially Richie, seems like they have to have eyes on Eddie at all times, like he’ll disappear if they turn around.

Eddie doesn’t blame them. For all he knows, he could go back into the abyss that they’d dragged him out of. He can’t pretend to know what they’ve been through, either. Everyone still has a little grief reflected in their eyes when they look at him.

All of the Losers (Patty included, because Eddie picks up quickly that she’s been a vital part of the rest of the Losers’ lives since he’s been… gone) find themselves congregating in Bill and Mike’s spacious living room, surrounded by books and a cozy warmth. They talk late, telling Eddie and Stan stories from the time they’ve been away.

Eddie finds himself nodding off before too long. He’s been out of it all day after the morning phone calls. He supposes he’s allowed to be a little off when he’s been through what he has in the past 48 hours. Hell, what he’s been through in the past few decades. He can be tired.

He murmurs a goodnight to everyone, collapses on the air mattress. He tosses and turns for a bit before falling asleep.

He doesn’t sleep as well this time.

His nightmares are filled with screams and blood, with the leper, with Pennywise’s true form, with Richie’s face and cracked glasses and “you’re braver than you think” and greywater and the Deadlights and his mother and “don’t hang around with dirty boys like that Tozier” and -

Eddie’s woken up by Richie and Bev practically breaking down the door to Bill’s office. He becomes vaguely aware of the tears still flowing down his face.

“I got him,” says Richie, and Bev nods sleepily, says “I love you,” and wanders back down the hall.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, breathless. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, voice rough and strangled-sounding. “You were, uh. You were screaming.”

“Sorry,” says Eddie. “Didn’t mean to wake you up. Shit.”

“I get it,” Richie says simply. Eddie sees something in Richie’s eyes that he doesn’t quite understand.

“It’s just,” says Eddie, and his eyes well with tears again, “I fucking  _ remember  _ it.”

Richie looks pained.

“I remember,” Eddie gasps, “I can still  _ feel  _ it, I still remember every goddamn second of it, I remember what it feels like to  _ die- _ ”

Richie sits next to him on the mattress, grabs his hands. “Breathe, Eddie,” and Richie’s crying too, but he’s still trying to help, and it makes Eddie’s chest go tight in a different way.

Eddie counts his breaths, four seconds in, seven second hold, eight seconds out. 

“Thank you,” he says when he doesn’t feel like he’s going to explode out of his body anymore.

“I didn’t do shit,” Richie says, and laughs, but it’s almost sad.

“You were here,” says Eddie.

“Yeah,” Richie says, “I guess so.”

“Did you have-,” Eddie begins to ask, but is interrupted.

“You good?” Richie asks, and Eddie almost asks him to stay.

“I think so,” he says instead.

“I’m right down the hall if you need me,” Richie says, and leaves. Eddie listens carefully to his footsteps until he hears them fade away down the hall.

Eddie stares at the ceiling for a while before slipping back into blissfully uneventful sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if the formatting of this chapter is weird, i wrote most of this on my phone which means i yelled “tab key for fucks sake i know you heard me” at siri 400 times because google docs mobile is a nightmare.
> 
> come yell at me on twitter! i’m @peachyylosxr and i bitch about writing sometimes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I offer to let you live with me out of,” Richie says, then switches to a melodramatic Voice, “the goodness of my heart, and this is how I am repaid? You wound me, Eds.”
> 
> "Someday you will figure out my goddamn name and God will weep,” Eddie deadpans, shoving past him to throw his bag in Mike’s truck.

Richie decides to leave the next morning. He’s already been moping around Bill and Mike’s house for far longer than any of the rest of them.

“Let’s GO, Eddie Spaghetti!” he hollers from the bottom of the stairs.

“Don’t make me regret agreeing to stay with you,” Eddie grouses, coming downstairs with the one bag he has (Mike again, he’d gone clothes shopping for Eddie and Stan because they were sorely lacking in wardrobe options. Eddie’s bags had been left in Derry, Stan’s clothes were all still in Atlanta).

“I offer to let you live with me out of,” Richie says, then switches to a melodramatic Voice, “the  _ goodness of my heart _ , and this is how I am repaid? You  _ wound _ me, Eds.”

“Someday you will figure out my goddamn name and God will weep,” Eddie deadpans, shoving past him to throw his bag in Mike’s truck.

Richie cackles and follows him (always following him, his brain supplies helpfully, and Richie tells it  _ shh _ ) to stack his own luggage in the bed of the truck and hops in the front seat before Eddie can.

“Oh absolutely fuck you,” Eddie huffs, but climbs in the back. 

“Maybe later,” Richie says with a wink, then mentally kicks himself. He can see Eddie’s flush in the rearview mirror. He’s probably embarrassed,  _ idiot.  _

Bev opens a window from upstairs to yell “BYE, BOYS,” loudly enough that the entire county probably hears. Ben appears to wave goodbye while clasping a hand over her mouth, which she licks and he wipes over her face.

“Oh, God,” Eddie groans. “They’re so gross-”

Mike swings into the driver’s seat and distracts Eddie from whatever tirade he was about to give on the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of the human mouth. He turns the key in the ignition and the truck starts with a grating growl.

Richie gasps. “Did you hear that, Mike?”

“Hear what, Richie?” Mike asks gamely.

“I think it’s trying to communicate,” Richie says, and cocks his head like he’s listening. “I think it’s saying- wait, hang on, yeah- it’s saying  _ kiiiillllll meeeeeee, Mikeeeeyyyy. _ ”

“Uh huh,” Mike says. “Sure it is, buddy.”

“God, you’re no fun,” Richie says. 

Mike grins. “I can’t make it  _ easy _ for you, can I?”

\---

They make it through the airport with a bit of a fuss over Eddie’s identification (he was evidently still legally dead but with some lengthy examination and questioning from the authorities he was dubiously cleared to fly. It’s a small airport). 

Richie retrieves his car from the airport valet and Eddie gawks.

“Oh, I forgot about your weird fucking boner for cars,” Richie says at the same time that Eddie whispers “That’s your  _ actual car _ ?”

“Yes, it’s my  _ actual car _ ,” Richie says, mimicking Eddie’s tone. 

“You drive a fucking  _ ‘67 Mustang _ ,” Eddie says, reverent. Richie frowns and follows his gaze.

“I mean, I guess,” he says with a shrug. “I just thought it looked cool.”

Eddie looks borderline murderous. “I would have  _ killed someone  _ to own this car,” he says.

“You wanna drive?” Richie asks.

Eddie looks like he’s been granted every wish he’s ever had in his life before his face falls.

“I don’t have my license…” he murmurs, and he looks so heartbroken that Richie could start crying.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Richie says, panicking, “look, dude, you won’t get pulled over unless you do something absolutely fucking stupid, and if you do, I bet I can get you out of it! It’s okay!”

“You sure?” Eddie asks, and normally something like this would take a lot more convincing but from the way he’s eyeing Richie’s car it’s not going to take hardly anything.

“Positive,” Richie says, and the word is only halfway out of his mouth before Eddie practically throws his bag into the back seat and clambers behind the steering wheel.

Richie smiles fondly and hops in the passenger seat.

Eddie’s looking at the interior like he’s experiencing a miracle. He looks more in awe of Richie’s car than he did at the prospect of being brought back to life by a turtle god.

“Are you gonna drive, or…” Richie trails off.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, voice hushed, then, “sorry. Thank you.”

“Alright, Hot Rod,” Richie says. “To Casa de Tozier!”

Eddie drives much more carefully than Richie thought him capable of, but he thinks it’s probably just him not wanting to hurt the car combined with the fact that he has yet to get his drivers’ license renewed. He follows directions easily, naturally, like he already knows where the apartment is. When they get out of the car, Eddie runs a hand along the door like he’s sad to leave it behind.

“Oh my god, you freak, let’s  _ go _ ,” Richie says. “You can jack off about it later.”

\---

Richie’s apartment is  _ nicer  _ than Eddie thought it would be. It’s minimal, modern, looks like it could have come straight out of a home decor catalog if it weren’t for the touches that were so clearly Richie, like the framed collection of Daredevil comic cover art on the wall or the little pom-pom chickens scattered across the bookshelves like little book-sentries. The cat (Kevin, Eddie reminds himself) comes from the back of the house, weaves between their legs. Richie scratches her head gently and she seems satisfied, wandering back to wherever she came from.

Eddie has evidently been making a face because Richie laughs. “I didn’t do any of this, by the way. This was all some interior designer who hated everything I picked out so I told her to just do everything.”

“It’s nice,” Eddie says.

“Thank ya much,” Richie responds, and shoves his hands in his pockets. This is something he’s done, Eddie thinks, since forever, he tries to make himself small in any way he can, whether it’s hunching over or the self-deprecating jokes that he builds around himself like a wall.

“I like those,” Eddie gestures at the record covers hung up over a small shelf with a turntable set atop it.

“Oh, really?” Richie asks, and his eyes light up. “A lot of those are old ones, like the stuff-”

“Like what we used to listen to,” Eddie smiles fondly, remembering nights spent blasting music and getting yelled at to turn it down.

“Yeah,” Richie says, mind somewhere else.

“Do I get to sleep anywhere or am I supposed to just stand here and hold my bag until you kick me out,” Eddie says.

“Oh shit, yeah, sorry,” Richie says, and leads him down a hallway lined with posters from concerts Eddie’s almost certain he didn’t actually go to.

“Ta-da,” Richie says with a flourish. 

The guest room is minimal, tastefully decorated, except for-

“What is  _ that _ ,” Eddie says, already going to pick up the offending item.

“That,” Richie says, giggling, “is a tanuki! They’re good luck, I think!”

“Why does it have BALLS,” Eddie asks, brandishing the small statue like he’s going to beat Richie over the head with it.

Richie flees, laughing maniacally, and Eddie sets the statue down gently before following.

\---

It turns out Richie’s actually a decent cook, something Eddie is surprised to learn.

And he looks  _ really  _ good in the kitchen.

Here’s the thing.

Eddie’s almost certain he’s gay.

He’s actually been pretty sure since he walked into the Jade, saw Richie, and ceased functioning for a couple seconds because holy fuck, Richie got  _ big _ . The only thing in his brain at that point had been “ _ shoulders _ ” backed by an angelic choir. A lot of things had made sense then, like why he’d never felt compelled to have sex with his wife (something she was fine with, she was almost pleased that he wasn’t as “animalistic” as some of her coworkers’ husbands) and why he’d been fixated on watching Richie’s comedy shows for years.

He’d had to do some re-evaluation by himself and come to the conclusion that yes, he definitely liked men.

And when he saw Richie’s face after waking up on Bill and Mike’s basement floor, he’d realized that he liked  _ Richie  _ specifically, which was something of a new development and something that he’d already known, really.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not extremely difficult to stay composed watching Richie stir whatever the fuck he’s making in a bowl, because  _ arms _ .

“Do you need help?” Eddie asks, overwhelmed by energy and the need to do  _ something  _ so he doesn’t vibrate out of his body.

“Yeah, sure,” Richie says absentmindedly, “pick some cilantro or something.”

Picking cilantro turns out to be a fantastic distraction from watching Richie. Eddie picks off every leaf fastidiously and pointedly does  _ not  _ look at Richie.

It turns out Richie’s been making fish tacos, which Eddie inhales three of like his life depends on it. For all he knows, it does. He’s been starving since he came back, like his body’s trying to make up for the over-a-year that it’s been out of service.

“Please don’t choke,” says Richie. “I don’t think I can bring you back from the dead again.”

“Beep fucking beep,  _ Richard _ , too goddamn soon,” says Eddie, mouth full of taco.

Eddie helps clean up, slowly begins to learn where everything goes in the kitchen, how the house is laid out. He is reassured by the fact that once again, he’s just down the hall from Richie, an arm’s reach away from help and safety. 

Richie puts on an album by The Doors and Eddie groans.

“I can’t believe you,” he says as “Soul Kitchen” begins playing. “The fucking Doors?”

Richie ignores him, warbling “Well the clock says it’s time to clooooose,” as he sweeps the kitchen floor. Eddie laughs in spite of himself, overly fond and glad to be where he is.

Eddie makes it through about four songs before he finds himself nodding off.

“You ready for bed-y, Spaghetti?” Richie asks, grinning.

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Eddie grumbles. “Show me how to work your shower.”

“Gladly,” says Richie, waggling his eyebrows, and Eddie rolls his eyes, hoping Richie doesn’t notice the blush warming his cheeks.

The guest bathroom is also nice, tastefully decorated, except for the inexplicable jar labelled “cocaine” in cursive script sitting on the counter that contains a box of tissues. Eddie showers quickly, changes into the pajama pants Mike bought him (a little long, Richie had already given him shit for it).

Eddie climbs into bed and is asleep for about an hour when he’s woken by Richie gently shaking him awake.

“Was I screaming again?” Eddie asks, and the way his voice sounds, rough and scratchy, answers his own question.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Richie asks gently.

“Not really,” Eddie says with a shudder. Richie moves to get up and Eddie blurts, “Could you just- could you just stay? For a minute?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, and sits on the edge of the bed like he’s not quite sure what to do with himself.

“Thanks, Rich,” Eddie murmurs, and closes his eyes. It may be ridiculous, but he feels safer just having Richie in the room with him. He drifts back to sleep. 

He’s woken again hours later, but Richie’s not there this time, which Eddie takes to mean he hasn’t been screaming in his sleep again. However, Kevin is perched at the end of his bed, eyes reflecting with an eerie glow in the darkness.

“Jesus,” Eddie breathes, “you scared the shit out of me.”

Kevin seems to take this as an invitation, because she pads up to where Eddie is sitting against the headboard and chirps like she’s expecting something. Eddie reaches out cautiously and scratches her behind the ears, which makes her purr like a small engine. He lays back down and she curls at where his legs bend at the hips and settles in, a tiny ball of warmth.

He doesn’t wake again until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [this](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pg_iSeI8L6U/maxresdefault.jpg) is the car richie drives, in case anyone was curious!
> 
> and [these](https://adilettanteoffruition.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/easter-chicks.jpg) are the chickens all over richie's bookshelves!
> 
> special thanks to ree for assuring me that a '67 convertible is indeed a sexy car, even to Car People!
> 
> come find me on twitter @peachyylosxr :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie would love nothing more than to tell Eddie, have a sweeping Hallmark movie romantic kiss in the rain, and carry him off into the sunset. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, where Eddie had fallen asleep on Richie while they were watching some nature documentary about platypuses and Richie had almost, almost leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. Then Eddie had moved, Richie had flinched so spectacularly that Eddie was almost knocked into the floor, and then he’d gotten yelled at for moving.

Living with Eddie, as it turns out, isn’t as difficult as it should be.

Yes, Richie finds himself looking for a little too long sometimes. It’s Eddie, of course he does. But it’s not  _ torture.  _ It can be enough, just this. 

That’s what he keeps telling himself.

And then there will be moments where he thinks  _ maybe _ .  _ If I just reached across, maybe he’d reach back _ , and then he kicks himself and thinks  _ no, dumbass, he’s still getting used to being alive. It’s only been a couple of months. Don’t fuck this up. _

While he’s been living with Richie, Eddie has become more adventurous, bolder in his decisions. Richie thinks maybe he knows the worst that could possibly happen already has, and it’s emboldened him to do more shit like eating cashews and dairy and shellfish (that one turned out to be real, as they found out one hospital visit later). 

Eddie has also started running again, something that he used to do in New York. Richie is more than okay with this, he understands Eddie needs something that’s just his, a time to be alone.

If only he wouldn’t wear those  _ fucking _ shorts. 

Richie remembers the first morning he’d stumbled out of his room, hearing someone in the kitchen, and almost slumped to the floor like a marionette with the strings cut at the sight of Eddie in shorts and a sleeveless top, drinking a smoothie.

“Morning, Rich,” he’d said, and Richie could barely grumble a response before he practically ran back to his room to take care of the inevitable boner resulting from seeing the man who’d caused his gay awakening in  _ running shorts.  _ In  _ his  _ kitchen.

Ben has been calling Richie on a regular basis, at least once a week, which is nice. It’s also infuriating because Ben is the sappiest romantic that Richie knows and he’s become  _ insufferable.  _ It usually begins with Ben asking Richie how he’s doing, Richie tells him some story about what he and Eddie are up to (“We marathoned all of the Twilight movies the other night, Eddie won’t stop going ‘I know what you are’ and laughing”) and then Ben starts going off about  _ true love  _ and  _ soulmates  _ and  _ I really think you should tell him, Richie,  _ and Richie argues with him until Ben relents, because he’s nice like that. He’s not nice enough to stop calling, though, and it’s getting worrisome because Eddie almost catches him.

“I just think,” Ben says, and Richie can hear some kind of power tool in the background that Bev is probably having too much fun operating, “if you don’t ever say anything, you’ll never know. Isn’t it worth knowing?”

“Easy for you to say, Ben, Bev wasn’t literally  _ living with you _ whenever you confessed,” Richie says, idly holding a feather toy for Lady Kevin to bat at. “I don’t want him to go,  _ oh, whoa, bro, you know I was married to a woman, right? I don’t like you like that _ .”

“That was a really good Eddie voice!” Ben says, cheerful. “I don’t think that’s what he would say at all! Oh, yeah, love, banister on the right- no-”

“This is all so  _ easy  _ for you, isn’t it,” Richie grumbles, “ _ oh, just tell him you love him, it’s so eaaaaaasy, just say your feeeeeliiiings. _ ”

“Your Eddie voice was better!” Ben says. “Tell him I said hi!”

“Uh huh,” Richie says, and they say goodbye. 

Richie would love nothing more than to tell Eddie, have a sweeping Hallmark movie romantic kiss in the rain, and carry him off into the sunset. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, where Eddie had fallen asleep on Richie while they were watching some nature documentary about platypuses and Richie had almost,  _ almost  _ leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. Then Eddie had moved, Richie had flinched so spectacularly that Eddie was almost knocked into the floor, and then he’d gotten yelled at for moving.

There was another moment, after they’d made dinner together. 

Eddie had been standing in the kitchen, drying dishes. Richie had looked over, and-

And the sunlight had been streaming through the window blinds and illuminating Eddie’s hair, giving it a glow like warm copper. It had lit his eyes, giving them a different, intense warmth, and he’d looked so beautiful in that moment that Richie found himself unable to breathe. He’d almost said something, had to bite his tongue to keep from saying it out loud.

So that’s how living with Eddie is going. Not torture, but something close, maybe.

\---

Eddie thinks he’s going to go batshit fucking crazy.

Since when did Richie get hot? It’s not like he didn’t notice in Derry, but here, where Eddie can walk into the living room and see Richie in a gray t-shirt and sweatpants, it’s almost unbearable. Eddie calls Bill often to complain, and Bill tells him he should just jump Richie, and Eddie usually ends up yelling at him over the phone. He’s pretty sure that most of the time Bill just puts him on speaker and walks away, but the process is cathartic anyways.

The worst was a night the first week after he’d moved in, when the nightmares were still really bad. They’ve gotten better now, more manageable, but the first few weeks had been awful. He’d woken up screaming again, found Richie standing in the doorway.

“You don’t have to come check on me, I’m fine,” he’d said, voice hoarse, and Richie had wordlessly clambered into bed with Eddie and wrapped his arms around him.

“This okay?” Richie had whispered, and Eddie had whispered back “yes,” not sure what he was agreeing to, and they’d slept like that until Eddie reluctantly extracted himself from Richie’s arms in the morning to go for a run.

There’s also Twitter.

People have taken notice of Eddie and Richie. Richie’s gained popularity since coming out (something Eddie learned after Googling his name, an article with a link to the tweet was one of the first results, he has tactfully not mentioned it to Richie, who would probably flee the country). This means that there are  _ hundreds _ of tweets about Richie’s ‘mystery man’. Eddie finds a kind of guilty pleasure in scrolling through theories about who he is and, creepy as it is, almost enjoys the fact that everyone believes he’s  _ with  _ Richie.

“You shouldn’t read that shit,” Richie says, appearing over his shoulder.

“FUCK’S SAKE,” Eddie yells, dropping his phone. 

“Twitter people are unhinged,” Richie continues, wandering into the kitchen. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Surprise me,” Eddie says, cautiously checking his phone for cracks. “I don’t think they’re unhinged, I think you just have a fanbase now that actually cares about you as a person.”

“Yes,” Richie says absentmindedly, retrieving a skillet from one of his overcrowded cabinets, “that is why I get probably hundreds of DMs a week now from people asking to file their nails on my chest.”

“Hm,” says Eddie, because he’s suddenly thinking about putting his hands on Richie’s chest.

Richie, blissfully, ignores him and continues rummaging around for ingredients for whatever the hell he’s decided he’s making tonight. 

Eddie’s found that it’s easier to just be  _ quiet  _ now. In the past, they’ve always been loud, shrieking and pushing,  _ touching _ , constantly in a bid to get the other boy’s attention, a whirlwind of action and noise. Now that it’s just the two of them, it’s like the dust can finally settle. 

Except Eddie feels that maybe it’s settled  _ too  _ much, because as much as he doesn’t want to think about it, Richie is going to want Eddie out of his apartment some day. Eddie will be expected to actually get a job, live on his own, and it’s like when he first graduated and was so scared out of his mind to be by himself that he latched onto the first familiar thing he found. This time though, he thinks it might be worse. It’s not like it was, where he always felt he was missing something but couldn’t quite put a finger on it. This time he knows exactly what ( _ who _ ) he would be missing.

Something begins smelling vaguely like food, and Eddie goes to sit at the bar and watch. It’s fun to watch Richie cook. He’s all over the kitchen, and Eddie’s reminded of the whirlwind again, how Richie never stops moving, talking, cracking jokes (mainly, Eddie thinks, because he doesn’t want people to be able to focus on  _ him  _ for too long. Don’t look behind the curtain). 

“Hey, taste this,” Richie says, and shoves a spoon in Eddie’s mouth. From the taste of it, it’s homemade pasta sauce, 

“Holy shit, that’s really good,” Eddie says, and Richie beams and returns to overseeing his small kingdom of pots and pans.

Richie removes a ball of dough from the fridge and begins digging through the cabinets again. 

“Are you  _ actually  _ making pasta from scratch?” Eddie asks, and he’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to move out when Richie can cook like this.

“Yeah, it’s not that hard- AHA!” Richie exclaims, holding his prize (a pasta roller, looks almost brand new) aloft. 

“Someday I am going to reorganize all of your cabinets,” Eddie says, smiling fondly.

“Noooo, doooon’t,” Richie whines, “I have a systeeeeem.”

“You do not.”

“No I do not,” Richie agrees cheerfully, and begins rolling out pasta. Eddie has to look away again, like some Victorian gentleman overwhelmed by a glimpse of ankle, because Richie’s arms are fucking  _ big  _ and he can’t think about it for too long or he’ll have to go shower for a suspiciously long time.

“Do you want help?” Eddie asks, gaze averted.

“Nope, just sit there and look pretty,” Richie says, and winks for good measure. Eddie’s face flushes.

He watches as Richie finishes rolling the dough and shaping the noodles. He dumps the noodles unceremoniously into a pot of boiling water. About 3 minutes later, he throws one at the wall.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Eddie says, watching the pasta slide to the floor.

“That’s how you check if it’s done,” Richie says, biting back a giggle.

“It’s  _ absolutely  _ not,” Eddie says, “if your pasta sticks to the wall that shit is  _ inedible _ . It’s like eating glue.”

Richie throws another noodle at the wall.

“I’m going to fucking throttle you,” Eddie says while Richie cackles. He stomps over to the pot and gingerly removes a noodle with the spoon, then takes a bite.

“It’s done,” he says. “Stop  _ throwing shit at the wall _ .”

“Aye-aye, Chef Kaspbrak,” Richie says, saluting, and removes the pot from the heat.

Dinner is good, because of course it is, Richie somehow always makes a gourmet-level dish despite never measuring  _ shit _ . Eddie thinks he might do it just to piss him off. Eddie helps with dishes, refusing to let Richie near the sink because the both of them usually end up soaked with water if he does.

Eddie watches Richie dance around the kitchen, putting away dishes and singing into a wooden spoon that he’s turned into a microphone. He’s singing shittily on purpose, which pisses Eddie off because he knows Richie actually has a pretty nice voice (something he’d discovered walking past the bathroom one day while Richie was showering. He’d had to take a moment to recover). He knows Richie is just doing it to try and make him laugh-

He’s just doing it to make Eddie laugh, he’s always trying to make Eddie laugh, because it makes him happy, Eddie  _ knows  _ it makes him happy because his left eye always goes squinty whenever he’s actually happy, and.

And.

Eddie thinks,  _ Oh, it’s because he loves me. He loves me too. This is what it’s like,  _ because all his life, he’s never had someone (other than the Losers, but that’s different) who loved him wholly, unconditionally, without wanting anything in return.

Richie just wants to see him happy. It makes sense. He offered to let Eddie stay with him, lets Eddie pick out recipes for dinner, lets Eddie choose which documentary to watch, because he wants Eddie to be happy, and this is a huge revelation to have while washing dishes, so Eddie puts it away for now.

“Eds, you okay?” Richie asks, waving a spatula in his face.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, grinning, “I’m good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> as always, feel free to come yell at me on twitter [@peachyylosxr](https://twitter.com/peachyylosxr)! i love to hear what you guys think!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The office job and the wife and the picket fence and the inevitable future 2 and a half kids was never Eddie. Since living with Richie, he’s been allowed to be more himself than he ever was. L.A.-back-from-the-dead-wants-to-be-a-mechanic Eddie feels like a whole person for the first time ever. For the first time in his life, he is allowed to be wholly, unapologetically himself, and he has a group of people who will love him not despite that fact, but because of it.

Later that night, Eddie resumes his life-changing revelation from the comfort of his own bed ( _ his  _ bed, he’s stopped thinking of it as temporary because of said revelation).

He makes a list in his head of the facts that he knows:

  1. He is in love with Richie. Probably always has been.
  2. Richie is in love with him. Also probably always has been.
  3. Richie does not know that Eddie is in love with him because
    1. Richie is so determined that no one will like him outside of his persona that he’s hidden behind it for years and
    2. Eddie was, in Richie’s defense, married to a woman and hasn’t exactly made his attraction to men public knowledge.



He makes this list and then promptly sets it aflame in his head because he’s not exactly sure what to do with this information. He’s never felt like this before, never felt the kind of love he feels for Richie, and he mourns, for a moment, the time he wasted as a shell of himself.

The office job and the wife and the picket fence and the inevitable future 2 and a half kids was never Eddie. Since living with Richie, he’s been allowed to be more himself than he ever was. L.A.-back-from-the-dead-wants-to-be-a-mechanic Eddie feels like a whole person for the first time  _ ever _ . For the first time in his life, he is allowed to be wholly, unapologetically himself, and he has a group of people who will love him not despite that fact, but because of it.

He can run, and he can eat gluten, and he can pet a cat without someone hovering over him, thinking they know him better than he does, and he will never stop being grateful to Mike for bringing the Losers back together.

He will never stop loving Richie for loving Eddie the way he’s realized he’s supposed to be loved.

He begins crafting a different scene in his mind as Kevin butts the door open with her head and jumps onto his bed.

He’ll make reservations at a nice restaurant in L.A. He’ll dress nice- that suit that Bev says brings out his eyes, maybe- and have dinner with Richie. The restaurant is, ideally, low-lit and has roses on the table, he thinks. There’s lots of eye contact. He hooks his ankle around Richie’s.

After that, they’ll walk through the park. Maybe it starts raining. Eddie looks Richie in the eyes, hair plastered to his forehead.

“I’m in love with you,” he says. A sweeping orchestral song is playing. “I’ve loved you as long as I can remember.”

“Oh, Eddie,” says Richie, and then Eddie dips him low in the rain, kisses him. The music swells in the background. Richie’s white shirt is soaked through, transparent, and-

“OKAY,” Present Eddie says out loud. Getting off track.

The rest of the plan is solid, though. He begins looking at date restaurants nearby as Kevin curls up against his side and purrs.

\---

Later the next day, they sit in the living room together. Eddie is looking at different universities in the area that offer mechanic programs. Richie is writing, pencil tucked behind his ear (even though he’s typing, he says it gives him ‘author vibes’). He’ll write a line, mutter it under his breath, and if it’s good enough, he’ll present it to Eddie for approval. If it makes Eddie laugh, Richie smiles and adds it to the ‘final draft’ document. If it doesn’t, Richie rolls his eyes good-naturedly and deletes it. Eddie’s so fond of him it makes his heart hurt.

Richie is sitting curled up in his chair, feet bare and dressed in a t-shirt (that reads ‘Women want me, Fish fear me, Police are searching for me in connection with the 1971 hijacking of a Boeing 727 aircraft and subsequent extortion of $200,000 after which I disappeared without a trace’. Eddie had made him hold still one day so he could read the whole thing and had subsequently gotten into an argument about Richie’s fashion choices). Sun streams through the window, illuminating the dust motes in the air and glinting off of Richie’s glasses. Eddie can feel himself looking for too long, but he can’t help from looking at Richie like he’s the center of the universe.

He may as well be. Eddie’s so head over heels in love with him he knows there will never be anyone else. Richie’s the one for him. The man who has always been at his side, who helped him realize his own bravery, who brought him back from the dead.

“Hey, Eds, what about this one,” Richie says, and before he can tell the joke, Eddie cuts him off.

“I love you,” he says without meaning to, and freezes.

Richie also freezes, caught like a deer in headlights, and goes completely red.

“Wh-,” he laughs, trying to play it off, and that just makes Eddie mad, so he really commits. 

“I  _ love  _ you,” Eddie says. “I’m in love with you.”

He’s watching, cautious, ready to pack his shit and go the  _ second  _ Richie says he was wrong, he doesn’t feel that way about Eddie, he wants him to leave now-

“You  _ cannot  _ be fucking with me right now,” Richie says, breathy, eyes shining. His eyes dart like he’s locating an escape route. “You  _ can’t _ . This isn’t funny. I don’t know who told you, but it’s not a fucking joke-”

“I’m not joking, Richie,” Eddie snaps. He can feel his own ears going pink, and he doesn’t know what the fuck Richie is talking about, but this is not going the way he wanted it to. Hell, he’s already made the restaurant reservations. This wasn’t the schedule.

Richie is silent for a moment.

“Are you serious?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Eddie nods wordlessly. 

“Can I,” Richie swallows, “can I kiss you?”

Eddie nods again, and Richie practically flies across the room and takes his face in his hands, and-

And it’s perfect, Eddie’s never understood the metaphor about fireworks, but he thinks he kind of understands it now. Richie’s lips are chapped, their noses are smashed together, but it’s  _ perfect.  _

Richie clambers into Eddie’s lap to make the angle less awkward.

“What are you  _ doing _ ,” Eddie laughs, and Richie kisses him again.

Eddie tangles one hand through Richie’s hair and places the other on his hip. Richie is still holding on to Eddie’s face like he’s scared if he lets go Eddie will disappear.

Eddie licks gently at Richie’s lower lip and Richie sighs, content. 

“What the fuck,” Richie says, breaking off. He rests his forehead against Eddie’s. “We could have been doing this for months.”

“I didn’t know!” Eddie laughed.    
  


“What, you didn’t know you were gay? I could have told you that much, you showed up to a Chinese restaurant in Gucci loafers,” Richie teases.

“Fuck off,” says Eddie, smiling. “I didn’t know you loved me.”

“How’d you figure that one out?” Richie asks.

“Uh,” Eddie says, buries his face in Richie’s (big,  _ fuck _ ) shoulder. “You were cooking for me.”

Richie laughs, and Eddie can feel it in his bones.

“Okay, get off,” Eddie says, shoving him gently, “you’re so fucking big. Ow.”

“You like it,” Richie says, waggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and grins as Richie goes red again.

Richie flops onto the couch, throwing one arm dramatically over his eyes.

“Can you say it again?” he asks, muffled.

“Say what?” Eddie asks, crashing next to him.

“Thachulubme,” Richie says.

Eddie picks up his arm gently and kisses him on the cheek. “I love you.”

Eddie thinks Richie’s smile could power a city.

“I love you,” he says again, and Richie reaches up to kiss him.

“I love  _ you _ ,” Richie mutters, still smiling.

“I love you,” Eddie says, and Richie breaks into a full-bodied laugh again.

“God, we’re going to be so obnoxious, aren’t we?” Richie asks, tears still shining in his eyes.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” Eddie says, and Richie plays along and leans in closer. “I think we’ve  _ been  _ obnoxious.”

“Yeah, but now we can do  _ this _ ,” Richie says, and kisses him again.

They stay on the couch together for hours. Richie puts on another album, something soft and slow, and they just talk. It’s mostly reminiscing, interspersed with teasing each other for not noticing the other loved them sooner.

They talk about when Eddie would elbow-drop Richie in the hammock and after the subsequent squabble, they’d just stay there together. When they would sit on Richie’s front porch in the swing and eat peaches, faces and fingers sticky and sweet, and Maggie would always coo over them and try to take a picture despite the boys’ grumbling. When Eddie had broken his arm, and Richie had handed him a red Sharpie so he could scribble a “V” over the “S” in “Loser” that Greta Fucking Keene had drawn and Richie had looked at him like he hung the moon. 

It was always a love language, the bickering and the making excuses just to touch each other and the silent moments in between, and now both of them know it.

“You know how I knew you were perfect,” Richie says, head in Eddie’s lap. “My cat likes you.”

“Really?  _ That’s  _ what did it?” Eddie asks, running his fingers through Richie’s hair. 

“No, I mean,” Richie says, breaking off with a breathless laugh, “no, absolutely not, I think what actually did it was when you tackled me in third grade because I said something about your mom.”

“Oh shit, I forgot about that,” Eddie says.

“But seriously,” Richie continues. “She doesn’t like anybody. Bev came over once and Kevin hid under the dresser the  _ entire  _ time.”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “She practically wrapped herself around me from day one.”

“I know,” Richie says. “It’s because you’re the best, actually.”

“ _ Stop, _ ” Eddie says, pressing a kiss to his forehead. 

“Hey, I’m really glad you’re here,” Richie says, propping himself up on his elbows. 

“You let me live here rent-free,” Eddie says. “ _ And  _ you said you would buy me a car.”

“Oh shit, I did say that,” Richie laughs. “What did you have in mind?”

“I had a couple ideas,” Eddie says fondly.

“I really am glad you’re here,” Richie says, and Eddie can hear the “alive” and “with me” and “I love you” in that sentence.

Eddie smiles. “So am I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was the last 'official' chapter of this fic, i hope you liked it! next chapter serves as an epilogue :)
> 
> as always if you liked this you can come join me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/peachyylosxr)!
> 
> also richie’s shirt is a real thing you can buy [here](https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Women-Want-Me-Fish-Fear-Me-by-Teridax/47202362.1482B?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=g.pla+notset&country_code=US&gclid=CjwKCAjwnK36BRBVEiwAsMT8WIMJgmqYuNaWDcwAQDkHIO36m8jupvhzsOvLWRFYxNnXGPkotbMqGRoCotYQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) you’re welcome


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The camera’s flash is blinding. Richie blinks, remembers to smile, arm wrapped around Eddie’s waist. A ring glints silver on his left hand, reflecting the lights on the red carpet. An identical one shines from its place on Eddie’s hand.

The camera’s flash is blinding. Richie blinks, remembers to smile, arm wrapped around Eddie’s waist. A ring glints silver on his left hand, reflecting the lights on the red carpet. An identical one shines from its place on Eddie’s hand.

Their wedding was simple, small. They’d invited the Losers, a couple of other friends. Bev’s friend Kay from Chicago had come. They’d invited Audra as well, a tentative peace offering to make up for the fact that she’d never really understand why Bill came back from Derry an entirely different person.

Richie had been nervous at first, not even sure if Eddie would want a wedding. After all, he’d already had one and it hadn’t turned out all that well. As soon as he’d mentioned this to Eddie, he’d gotten a smack upside the head and a reminder that Eddie  _ wanted  _ to spend the rest of his life with Richie. Richie had cried and they’d planned it together, side-by-side in every decision.

It had been the wedding Richie had always dreamed of, in those moments when he was 13 and could let his thoughts roam freely. A short ceremony, a  _ massive  _ cake that Richie had insisted on, a long party filled with friends and laughter. There was a pool, which had proven to be a mistake as Richie had thrown Bev in it after she’d “beeped” him. Ben had then shoved Richie in to avenge her and then somehow they’d all ended up in the pool in formal wear. Eddie was the last one to be pulled in, bitching about how expensive the suit was until Richie crept up behind him, wrapped him in a bear hug, and tackled him into the pool.

It was perfect. It was everything they’d ever wanted and everything they could possibly ask for. They have a framed photo of the eight Losers sitting on their mantle. Every member in the picture is soaked to the bone and laughing.

Bill and Mike (also married now, they’d beaten Richie and Eddie to it by a year) had collaborated on a project together, a film based off of  _ The Black Rapids _ . The Losers had all received a formal invitation to attend and had all graciously accepted. Bev, according to Ben, had screamed and began designing outfits immediately.

“Who are you wearing?” a journalist shouts.

“The arm candy or the outfit?” Richie shouts back, earning a laugh.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Beverly Marsh,” he calls.

“Of course,” Richie adds.

The team of journalists ask Richie a few interview questions (shallow things, “how long have you known the Hanlons”, “when’s your next special coming out”, and one asks Eddie if he’s ever thought about acting, or even modeling. This is met with a resounding ‘fuck no’).

The media has gotten fairly used to Eddie’s presence after the initial fascination with finding out who he  _ was _ . He’s now the topic of several conspiracy boards, but the Losers have made a pact to not respond to any questions about the years-long gap that Eddie was ‘missing’. Now most of his media presence is due to tabloids like the Daily Mail snapping pictures of him at his new job as a mechanic, clothes covered in grease (“Kaspbrak gets down and dirty,” one of the headlines had read, and Richie had read the entire article aloud, causing Eddie to take his phone and spike it onto the couch). The whole situation is bizarre, how easy it had been for him to rejoin society after being literally  _ dead _ , but they’ve attributed everyone’s seeming acceptance to It’s remaining influence and moved on. 

Richie’s fanbase changed  _ drastically  _ with the release of his own comedy special (he’d been working on it for forever, Eddie had practically had to put him in a straightjacket the night it dropped so he didn’t attempt to flee the country). He’s also treated differently in the media, now heralded as a “gay icon”. Eddie’s seen several kids, probably within the 13-18 year old range, who have come up to Richie and told him how much it meant that he came out. Richie cries every time.

After a while, they find their seats (all of the Losers next to each other, of course, they wouldn’t have it any other way) and watch the movie. Eddie grips Richie’s hand as soon as the CGI clown, which is eerily similar to the actual thing (Eddie yells at Bill for this later) comes on screen and doesn’t let go until the end of the movie. 

Bill and Mike host a party afterwards. It’s mostly people within the film industry, casting directors and producers looking for connections, which Richie is ecstatic about because Stan likes to play a game with casting directors where he acts like he knows anything about film production and slowly begins to slip in more and more bizarre phrases, presented as film jargon, until they leave, unsure that they even know how to do their jobs.

“Look,” Richie stage-whispers to Eddie, holding his hand, “he’s got one,” and he’s right. Stan has already found some poor soul and is talking to them, expression neutral and hands waving lazily. The person looks like they’re entranced, eyes wide and nodding. Patty is standing next to him, face also schooled into a neutral expression, and acting like she’s following the conversation intensely.

“Oh God,” Eddie says under his breath, and Richie giggles.

“Stan’s single-handedly going to dismantle the American film industry,” Richie says, snagging some fancy hors d’oeuvre from a tray passing by and handing it to Eddie.

“What the fuck is this,” Eddie asks, taking a bite.

“Dunno, it has asparagus,” Richie says, “I found Bev. We’re going to talk to her,” and tugs Eddie through a sea of people.

Richie is very good at schmoozing. Eddie is very good at clinging to his arm and eating the things that Richie hands him (except one thing that very clearly had shrimp in it, which shoved in Richie’s mouth while he was in the middle of talking to Mike). Most of the film people elect to politely ignore him, mostly focusing on Richie. Eddie is happy to not have to small-talk everyone for the entire night.

Eddie leaves, goes and gets drinks for the both of them. He gets an Old Fashioned for himself and some drink that is a violent shade of pink for Richie. When he comes back, there’s a man talking to Richie. He’s smiling, leaning toward Richie, very close for the amount of space that he has.

Eddie comes back, hands Richie his drink, and kisses him on the cheek. Richie unthinkingly wraps an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie smiles to himself, smug in the knowledge that Richie is  _ his.  _

“Thank you, my love,” Richie says, taking a drink. “Wait, what the hell is this?”

Eddie shrugs. “It sounded like something you’d like.”

The other man visibly wilts at the words  _ my love _ , excuses himself and slinks away.

Richie’s charming like this. He’s smiling, agreeable, everything about his body language says  _ this is a person you should like _ . Eddie knows he’s going to make fun of this twink as soon as he’s out of hearing distance.

He’s right.

“Holy shit,” says Richie, pressing another kiss to the top of Eddie’s head, “did you hear that guy?”

“No,” Eddie laughs, “what’d he say?”

“ _ Clearly  _ just trying to get connections,” says Richie. “As if I remember anyone.”

“Mmm,” Eddie hums. 

“And don’t think I didn’t notice that little display,” Richie says, turning to him. “I cannot  _ believe  _ you got jealous of that kid.”

“I didn’t-” Eddie begins to protest.

“Yes you absolutely did,” Richie says, laughing. “Okay, for one thing, he’s like  _ 20 years old- _ ”

“He was very close to you!” Eddie hisses, biting back a laugh of his own.

“Control yourself!” Richie says. “Down, boy!”

“You’re hot!” Eddie says. “I can’t help it!”

“ _ You’re  _ hot,” Richie says. “For all I know, he was actually into you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Eddie says, jabbing him in the ribcage.

“Ow.  _ You  _ don’t make sense.”

“Are we playing this game? Really? Right now?”

Someone else approaches Richie then, offering a handshake to both him and Eddie too, out of courtesy, and starts talking about how much they enjoyed his special.

Eddie pays no attention to the other person, opting instead to watch Richie. He’s hot like this, Eddie thinks, dressed in a tailored navy suit as opposed to Eddie’s deep red, and hair swept into something resembling that could be called “neat”. His arm is a comforting weight over Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie leans into his side, suddenly tired, and soaks in the warmth that Richie always seems to be radiating.

The person ends the conversation, leaves, and Richie turns to Eddie, eyes sparkling. 

“What?” he says with a laugh, pulling Eddie closer to him. “Are you okay? We can go home if you want, I’m starting to get tired of these people.”

“I’m good,” Eddie says, smiles softly. 

The Losers drift together, always seeking each other. They stay late, happy to be in one another’s company. Patty is conspicuously not drinking, a fact that Richie points out in a whisper after elbowing Eddie in the side.

There’s a sense of  _ rightness _ , with all of them together. It seems like the world spins a little slower, like colors are brighter. 

Stan and Patty are the first to leave. Patty pecks Richie on the cheek and Stan hugs the both of them. 

Ben and Bev follow. Bev is a clingy drunk and wraps Richie and Eddie in a hug that lasts for almost a solid minute. Ben peels her gently off of them and carries her out of the venue, heeled shoes held in one hand.

Richie turns to Eddie. “You wanna go home?”

_ Home.  _ It’s a nice word. Home used to be fear, trapped, sickness, smothering. 

Home is different now. It’s warm, home-cooked meals, a purring cat, sunlight streaming through a window, music playing constantly, wedding pictures decorating a wooden bookshelf. 

Home is Richie. Home is Buddy Holly glasses, laughter, unconditional love.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for all the kind words and support. if you've been reading from the beginning, if you just read the whole thing in one sitting, thank you so much. this is the longest project i've ever had and the support here has been overwhelming. i'm so glad that other people have enjoyed the story i've written. it really means a lot to me!
> 
> my twitter is [@peachyylosxr](https://twitter.com/peachyylosxr)! drop by and say hello! i've already begun planning several new works, so keep an eye out for updates! <3


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